Navy Shoots Down Plane With Really Big Raygun

The navy is developing weapons class lasers? The navy?? How long until we start seeing sharks with fricken lasers on their fricken heads?
 
dbu8554 said:
Dont see how, first off is theirs mounted on a ship,aircraft or land? Either way we protect our carriers well don't see anyone getting near em anytime soon.
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Yea in a carrier group all the comabt ships #1 priority is to protect the carrier at ALL costs. This includes getting inbetween a torpedo and the carrier with your ship to take the impact.
 
Nanan said:
I am not sure about the current fleet but the Destroyer they are working on now to host the RailGun will be sporting a nuke reactor and capacitor bank able to output 64 megajoules sustained for a 10 rounds per second fire rate per gun at 32 megajoules per shot.
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I honestly don't think we are going to see any surface combatants with nuclear reactors again for a long time. CGNs were the last to do that and they have all been decommisioned for a long time.
 
Spazilton said:
I wonder what the power requirements are and if they are going to be able to intergrate that in the small relative production capacities of today's modern surface ships.
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the system looks like whats on most carriers so seeing as all of them are nuke powered power isnt an issue
even a good number smaller ships have reactors so again power isnt an issue

on some thing like a ship you dont weight issues so you can make the power you need easily
the real question is when does this get small enough to fit on a fighter and still be useful
 
Elios said:
the system looks like whats on most carriers so seeing as all of them are nuke powered power isnt an issue
even a good number smaller ships have reactors so again power isnt an issue

on some thing like a ship you dont weight issues so you can make the power you need easily
the real question is when does this get small enough to fit on a fighter and still be useful
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What the hell are you talking about? In our fleet, only carriers and subs are nuclear powered. Everything else, with the exception of the USS Constitution, burns some form of dead dino juice.

LaWS uses the same mount as the Phalanx CIWS which means it can be retrofitted onto just about every surface combatant in our fleet. Power won't be an issue on small ships since the system doesn't lase for minutes on end. It is a short interval weapon which if needed will have a supplemental energy storage capability like a capacitor or flywheel system.
 
Well I've thoroughly reseached the thread and no ones said it.

I am the LaWs!
 
Spazilton said:
Yea in a carrier group all the comabt ships #1 priority is to protect the carrier at ALL costs. This includes getting inbetween a torpedo and the carrier with your ship to take the impact.
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Seems to me, a laser would be a mite quicker.
Azhar said:
Instead of going around the Yavin IV's planet, they should have blown up the planet.
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Or just come out of hyperspace on the other side...?
 
I really don't see what the big whoop is about that Robot. The military just drives up to the minefield now and does the same thing. The danger is the same if you aren't in the minefield. Zero.
 
I will need one of these mounted on the hood of my car.

And the whole Star Wars discussion - why didn't they just blow up the planet? Excellent question.
 
Elios said:
the system looks like whats on most carriers so seeing as all of them are nuke powered power isnt an issue
even a good number smaller ships have reactors so again power isnt an issue

on some thing like a ship you dont weight issues so you can make the power you need easily
the real question is when does this get small enough to fit on a fighter and still be useful
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The United States has had no surface combatants other than Aircraft Carriers that are nuclear powered since the end of the 90s. The various cruiser classes of surface ships to have nuclear reactors were th:
Long Beach Class (CGN-9), which was decommisoned in 1995.
The Bainbridge Class (CGN-25) which was decommisoned in 1996.
The Truxtun Class (CGN-35) decommisoned in 1995.
The California Class (CGN-36 and CGN-37) which were both decommisoned in 1999,
The Virginia Class (CGN38, 39, 40 and 41) the last of which The USS Arkansas (CGN-41) was decommisoned in 1998.

My concern is the vast majority of surface ships wouldn't have the power requirements without massive upgrades to use a system like this. I would Imagine the power requirements are quite high, thats why I was wondering about the practacality of this in a surface warfare enviroment.

Even so, having a nuclear reactor doesn't guarntee vast quanties of electrical power. First off Naval nuclear reactors are operated ant MUCH lower efficency do the the amount of saftey and redundency that is built into the reactor systems. Second of all those reactors primary function is moving the ship, electricy generation was a secondary element in the design, and was most likely designed to meet the needs of the ship with reasonable room to grow for future upgrades and expansions. I don't think they had high energy lasers in mind when they were designed.

Just my 2c, I would like to see how this would work in a practical enviroment.
 
After reading phalanx post that would make a lot of sense if they are planning this as a replacement to CIWS. From my experience when CIWS works it works. When a mount has issues, it has issues. I had a lot of buddies that were CIWS FCs that did nothing but fix issue after issue on thier mounts.

If its a short duration laser with small pulses a capacitor system like you mentioned would make sense. I would argue with how crappy and unstable shipboard power could be it would be a necessity.

Coming from a ex Navy ET leave it to me to still be geeky when it comes to Naval Ships...
 
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