Navy Laser Sets Ship on Fire

Brilhasti said:
Power sources are going to become a major concern for naval operation and war soon too. With these new technologies that require HUGE amounts of power we and other nations are going to build ships with HUGE reactors. Crazy stuff
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Power isn't going to be a major concern. You simply need capacitors. You're just stuck having to charge the weapons. Then you have your regular bullet, missiles, etc for quick reaction.
 
I was joking about the chrome guys, I didn't think you would take it seriously and start giving analysis. Truth is that even the most reflective surfaces still absorb a good amount... about 5%. That might not seem like alot, but its enough to burn the surface and render any mirror useless very fast. Not to mention, the frequency of the laser might not even allow for the usual reflective materials to work.

I would still use it to go fishing though.
 
Obi_Kwiet said:
For a laser, that's very impressive. For a ship mounted weapon, that's pitiful.
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I think it was more 'proof of concept' than a demo. They likely want to get the optics and targeting right before they ramp up the power. First things first, you know... dont need to blow a hole in their own ship by accident because they didn't adjust something just right.
 
THOSE WERE Mercury 200 horse outboards! Don't does idiots have any idea what those engines cost!!!!
They are about $12K each!!!

I almost puked when I saw that. :mad:
 
Brak710 said:
shield everything with mirrors problem?
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People always think that works?? it does not, the higher the power laser the less use a mirror can be. A "normal" mirror is useless, a mirror on a hull of a ship laughable.
 
Yoda4561 said:
Mirrored surfaces aren't a big problem, they either shoot at a place without them, or employ more destructive physical munitions.
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I don't think you'd seed to mirror the boat. You could probably get by with adding a device that just kicks up a lot of spray around the boat.
 
krotch said:
Power isn't going to be a major concern. You simply need capacitors. You're just stuck having to charge the weapons. Then you have your regular bullet, missiles, etc for quick reaction.
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Yeah...
100kw laser vs 2x150 megawatt nuclear reactors on a destroyer.
Not seeing a problem here.
 
I'm betting they focused on the black chassis of the motors for best effect. The tracking IS impressive though, as you could tell it wasn't just zig zagging around with the waves. This seems much more like a disabling device then a outright destruction one. Granted, I wouldn't want to be hit in the eye with it.
 
I'm impressed the laser managed to stay on target when both the host ship and the target are being buffeted by the water. I wonder if the accuracy would be good enough to use this for self-defense purposes like the Phalanx CIWS/C-RAM systems..
 
I'm glad we still have money for stupid shit while American's starve and languish unemployed.
 
undertheradar said:
I think it was more 'proof of concept' than a demo. They likely want to get the optics and targeting right before they ramp up the power. First things first, you know... dont need to blow a hole in their own ship by accident because they didn't adjust something just right.
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That's done on land way before it gets mounted on a ship.
 
Oomps said:
Yeah...
100kw laser vs 2x150 megawatt nuclear reactors on a destroyer.
Not seeing a problem here.
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100kW lasers are not what we want. As mentioned above I would say this test was to test accuracy and targeting systems. A military grade FEL laser will be in the Megawatt range. THESE LASERS ARE PULSED, So lets say its a 5MW laser. A very long pulse length would be 1/1000 of a second. Thats 5MW of power used in 1/1000 of a second. So if a laser of that power would use 300Billion Watts in an hour of usage. We have some challenges to overcome. Also consider that we are integrating rail guns into our naval systems. Rail Guns require huge amounts of electromagnetic energy.

Hell for all we know they could only do a 100kw laser with available power. The video of the outboard engine being set on fire used a lot more then 100kw to do that. That rating for the laser is for a Pulse.

I brought the energy thing up because we are not going the route of storing chemicals to start the reaction to create the power needed for these lasers.

But hey, maybe Im smoking crack but I like this kinda crap! lol:D
 
Croak said:
Most likely a boat seized under drug trafficking laws.
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Still, It would have been nicer to give that boat to the border patrol or Homeland Security for their duties and use an old boat for this test. It's a bit wasteful to completely wreck this nice of a boat. They'll probably buy another, for four time as much at taxpayer's expense later.
 
Saabjock said:
Still, It would have been nicer to give that boat to the border patrol or Homeland Security for their duties and use an old boat for this test. It's a bit wasteful to completely wreck this nice of a boat. They'll probably buy another, for four time as much at taxpayer's expense later.
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Unless it is a standard class vessel used by the US government the cost to bring it up to spec, train crews on the now not the same class vessel, maintain a separate supply chain, stock parts, develop maintenance routines, and train maintenance crews makes keeping odd ball non-class vessels prohibitively expensive. There are REASONS why vessels are standardized and not just any old piece of shit gets hauled in to be used.

This isn't necessarily directed at you alone, because all of the whining about shooting the boat is uniformed Monday morning quarterbacking by people watching a single video and no actual training in supply or product development or understanding of why the vessel was used.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
THOSE WERE Mercury 200 horse outboards! Don't does idiots have any idea what those engines cost!!!!
They are about $12K each!!!

I almost puked when I saw that. :mad:
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further proof we need to reduce military spending, right?
 
WTF? Those engines cost a fortune? couldnt they just put some gasoline on a raft in a tank and blow it up? or something else flamable?

I paid for that shit.. that pisses me off...
 
cklepinger said:
WTF? Those engines cost a fortune? couldnt they just put some gasoline on a raft in a tank and blow it up? or something else flamable?
I paid for that shit.. that pisses me off...
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I kinda doubt you bothered to lift a finger to find out if your statement is even true. And just popped off "[grump] government is waisting my money again [grump]".

Where it is quite possible they went and bought brand new outboards and . . burnt them (and if they had the budget to do such they could indeed - congress oked there budget and we elected them).
but It is just as likely for 100 other scenarios where seized equipment to broken engines where used etc etc . . . really do not know.
Regardless of the real answer the point is, jumping to a conclusion and basing a compliant on no information, seems to be the "new" thing in the US these days.
Caring about facts or truth seems to be irrelevant, and making a noise however incoherent seems to be all that matters . . lame indeed.
 
I just remember contracting for the military and when we had show a sim with stand-in artwork and a thrustmaster at a milestone meeting they unanimously said "It doesn't work till the real art is in there and the correct cyclic is used.".

To us artist and programmers it's just a matter of swapping things out. At lunch that day they went more into detail why they can't say it "works"(one having been in software development in the past), it was laid out like this: Peoples lives are at stake. It needs to work as it was intended with proper equipment. Anything less than what you said it could do is not acceptable.

I figure it is the same with this test. A scientist in a lab can tell you all day that this laser can pop a hole in a running outboard motor at 1 mile in choppy seas (and stay locked on), but it means squat till it actually done. And if people are putting their lives on the line, they have to make sure this thing works in a real situation. If a $6,000 boat will help in making sure this works and allows someones mom, dad, brother or sister to come home, I don't have a problem with that.
 
Lamont said:
If a $6,000 boat will help in making sure this works and allows someones mom, dad, brother or sister to come home, I don't have a problem with that.
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How about $5.2 billion in lost research? The USAF already made an airborne laser that could blow up missiles. Then they abandoned the project. So why the hell is the Navy starting from scratch, from what I can tell, is the same exact fucking project. Just that it's mounted on a ship, instead of a plane.
 
Naieve said:
Everyone with non-stealth aircraft are going to get reamed when the aircraft versions of this that they are working on come out.
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They already accomplished this all the way back in 1985. 5 Mega-Watts. The test vehicle was a very slightly modified B1.
































didn't you see the movie Real Genius???
 
krotch said:
How about $5.2 billion in lost research? The USAF already made an airborne laser that could blow up missiles. Then they abandoned the project. So why the hell is the Navy starting from scratch, from what I can tell, is the same exact fucking project. Just that it's mounted on a ship, instead of a plane.
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You really think they literally started from scratch? Really? ok.....
 
You do realize that glass responds to light differently than steel, right?

And please point out a ship that has a hull nearly a half mile thick.
WBurchnall said:
Well, there are two reasons I can think off of the top of my head. A. I wonder, if the lazer is hot enough to melt through 2000 ft of steel in a single second, I wonder how long the laser would take to melt 'glass' aka a mirror that's maybe 1/8th of an inch think? I suppose about 5 micro-seconds(not miliseconds) at which point the lazer is once again lighting your ship on fire. If you are extremely worried about the 5 microseconds of 'lazer' boucning back, you could attempt to aim it so the reflection is cast into the sea. IE at a cuved area of the ship's hull and make the ship start taking on water or target the same area and cut a horizontal line across seperate the top half of the boat from the bottom half. Alternatively, cut a reasonably large circle.

Secondly, a lazer can target/fire theoretically extremely fast. If you had a large mirror you were physically moving around the ship with 'motors' to try to avoid the lazer, well, there's the issue of it only last 5 micro seconds. Ignoring that, consider that a lazer can travel that 1 mile, considering its traveling at the speed of light, several orders of magnitude faster than your mirror can move via motors to protect that area of the ship and you'd only need to target an unprotect area of the ships hull for all of (1 mile / 186,282.397 miles per second) = 5.36 x 10^-6 seconds.

If you coated the ENITRE SHIP in mirrors, that would be fantastic except for the mirror lasting only 5 microseconds before being melted and the lazer going straight thru and the pointed out flaw of the ability to target areas of the ship were the hull is curved so the deflection is into the sea(not back at the navy ship firing the lazer). Not to mention the expense of covering entire ships in mirrors.
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Paul_Johnson said:
You really think they literally started from scratch? Really? ok.....
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Uh, yes. You obviously don't know the military and military contractors. The US Office of Naval Research are the ones funding their little laser project. The USAF paid Boeing the money for their laser project. Do you think Boeing decided to just give all their research data to the Navy?

If they did, the Navy could have been lighting boat engines on fire since the 1980s. If they got recent data, they could light the whole boat on fire from 600 km away.

Barely light a boat engine on fire from 1 mile away. Ya, they must have gotten their hands on the USAF's research data.

Whatsisname said:
You do realize that glass responds to light differently than steel, right?

And please point out a ship that has a hull nearly a half mile thick.
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Umm...probably every single supercarrier has a hull of half a mile thick. Supertankers. The hull of the ship isn't a single sheet of metal, but it's the whole structure that sits in the water. The metal sheets themselves might only be 2-3 inches thick, but the hull can be half a mile thick. You're easily talking 2-3 ft of metal, if not more.
 
krotch said:
Uh, yes. You obviously don't know the military and military contractors.
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Actually very intimately. This is not my day job.

The US Office of Naval Research are the ones funding their little laser project. The USAF paid Boeing the money for their laser project. Do you think Boeing decided to just give all their research data to the Navy?
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Not all of it but substantial amounts of the information gathered from those projects has become readily available. The Navy did not run a completely separate development project in a vacuum reinventing the wheel.
 
krotch said:
I'm not seeing how that's real useful. I was thinking it was like...instantaneously shot through. Like it burned a hole in the engines, then caught it on fire.

I can see this as being useful for killing ppl, not so much against vehicles. A weapon that has no recoil, no need for calculations of wind, distance, gravity, etc.
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Yeah it's not as impressive as the star wars project, test laser footage, those blew holes through plate steel, this is like watching a kid with a magnifying glass.
 
you have got to be kidding me :rolleyes:

krotch said:
Umm...probably every single supercarrier has a hull of half a mile thick. Supertankers. The hull of the ship isn't a single sheet of metal, but it's the whole structure that sits in the water. The metal sheets themselves might only be 2-3 inches thick, but the hull can be half a mile thick. You're easily talking 2-3 ft of metal, if not more.
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Paul_Johnson said:
Not all of it but substantial amounts of the information gathered from those projects has become readily available. The Navy did not run a completely separate development project in a vacuum reinventing the wheel.
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But how much did they have to pay to use that information? So much of what the Pentagon funds they don't even own the IP rights on. So sure, they may have been able to get their hands on the original project data, but how much did Boeing charge them for the rights to it?
 
Just need to find some mutated sea bass from Fukushima, piss them off then attach these to their heads.
 
krotch said:
Umm...probably every single supercarrier has a hull of half a mile thick. Supertankers. The hull of the ship isn't a single sheet of metal, but it's the whole structure that sits in the water. The metal sheets themselves might only be 2-3 inches thick, but the hull can be half a mile thick. You're easily talking 2-3 ft of metal, if not more.
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Supercarriers aren't even half a mile long, and the Free Electron Laser project (not this one) the Navy is working on can burn through 20 feet of steel per second once they get it up to full power.
 
Paul_Johnson said:
Not all of it but substantial amounts of the information gathered from those projects has become readily available. The Navy did not run a completely separate development project in a vacuum reinventing the wheel.
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Yep, of course. The Navy obviously received some of the research data from the USAF. Hency why the Navy uses a completely different type of laser. How silly of me.


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Also sorry for the ship detail. 1/4 mile. I don't have a clue how long these supercarriers are. Supertankers are close to 1/2 mile.

Also the Navy's laser can't burn 20 ft of steel per second. They are working towards that currently. The laser requires a megawatt of power to hit that. Currently the laser can only hit 14 kilowatts, as of Feb.
 
no they are not. The Knock Nevis, the biggest ship ever built, was barely longer than 1/4 miles. And your blabbering about thickness was complete nonsense.

krotch said:
Also sorry for the ship detail. 1/4 mile. I don't have a clue how long these supercarriers are. Supertankers are close to 1/2 mile.
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krotch said:
Yep, of course. The Navy obviously received some of the research data from the USAF. Hency why the Navy uses a completely different type of laser. How silly of me.
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Different types of lasers does not mean that they were developed completely separately in a vacuum reinventing the wheel.


Also sorry for the ship detail. 1/4 mile. I don't have a clue how long these supercarriers are. Supertankers are close to 1/2 mile.
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So you don't actually know how hull thickness is measured do you?
 
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