US Laser and Rail Gun Development News

Jura said:

found this funny text:

"Laser skeptics sometimes note that laser proponents over the years have made numerous predictions about when lasers might enter service with DOD, and that these predictions repeatedly have not come to pass."

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Well, for all the naysayers and detractors, it is a moot point now.

The US now has an operational Laser at sea aboard the USS Ponce.


The tests, shown in that video, destroying surface targets and UAVs are from November 2014.

The fact is, since September 2014, the US Navy has had a $40 million, 30-kilowatt Laser Weapon system (LAWS) deployed on the USS Ponce in the Persian Gulf.

Chief of US Naval Research said:

They’re using it every single day. Sailors — not contractors or engineers — perform basic maintenance, training on the Xbox-style controls, destroying practice targets such as drones, and sensors on suspicious ships and aircraft, and using the laser’s sophisticated optics as a sort of super-telescope.

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The US Navy then announced, in December 2014, that the LAWS system is operational for use in the Persian Gulf.

The difficulty in making a HEL system soldier proof is not obvious. The cleanliness required for the optics means you would probably seal them in a purged environment (dry, clean air or N2 with some way to monitor for leaks). Only the output window would need cleaning and then it would use a very hard optical coating that can take abuse and exposure to salt and humidity. Next, there are a lot moving stages involved in keeping the boresight between the pointing sensors and the outgoing laser beam. These need to be calibrated and rechecked automatically by software every time the system is booted up. The lasers also need to be kept in pristine cleanliness and will also be sealed. So all diagnostics to make sure current draw, temperature, beam quality etc is maintained will have to be automatic through software. HEL diode pumps will fail catastrophically if there is a hiccup in the cooling system so that needs to be bullet proof. The gimbal bearings and mount "model" need to be re-calibrated and synced to the ship navigation along with accelerometers that feed into pointing corrections, etc etc. Just a lot of nitty details that need to debugged to the nth degree. All these little details are overlooked when you just examine the external elements of the system but they are the reasons why things take so long and cost so much.

Link to a navy summary report covering lasers and railguns. Lots of interesting pictures.

Lockheed Martin's modular ATHENA laser weapon is headed to production

By Drew Prindle

Published October 09, 2015
0 0


(Lockheed Martin)

The US military already has a few high-powered laser weapons at its disposal, but it's about to get a hell of a lot more. Earlier this week, defense contractor Lockheed Martin of its modular, Advanced Test High Energy Asset (ATHENA) laser system for the US Army -- a weapon that's expected to roll out on the battlefield sometime next year.

If you're not familiar with the ATHENA system, all you really need to know is that Lockheed has been working on it for the past few years, and demonstrated its power a few months ago by with it. This feat was accomplished by firing a sustained 30 kilowatt burst at the vehicle's hood, and burning a hole through the engine block. It's ridiculously powerful -- but power alone isn't its most revolutionary feature.

The thing that makes ATHENA special is the fact that it's built using modular techniques. The weapon combines multiple fiber modules to generate an intense laser beam. According to Lockheed, this layered approach "reduces the chance for mission disruption as a result of a component failure and minimizes the need for frequent maintenance or repair."

Related:

In addition to being far more reliable, ATHENA's modular design also allows operators to add or subtract laser modules to increase or decrease power as needed. The base model is capable of firing a 60kW beam, but with off-the-shelf commercial fiber laser components, the modules can be linked together to produce lasers of up to 120 kW if the situation calls for it. If you're having trouble wrapping your head around how powerful that is, just take a look at what is capable of, and keep in mind that ATHENA is roughly 20,000 times as strong.

In the near term, Lockheed expects its lasers to "provide a complement to traditional kinetic weapons in the battlefield," but their potential future applications are far more dramatic. Moving forward, the company says that ATHENA lasers will help protect soldiers from threats such as "swarms of drones" or "large numbers of rockets and mortars."

strehl said:

Link to a navy summary report covering lasers and railguns. Lots of interesting pictures.

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Click to expand...

In my mind, the biggest utility for lasers and HVP as a game changer is in the prospect of significantly changing the cost exchange ratio with ASM and ASBM .

TerraN_EmpirE said:

Lockheed Martin's modular ATHENA laser weapon is headed to production

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By Drew Prindle

Published October 09, 2015

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(Lockheed Martin)

The US military already has a few high-powered laser weapons at its disposal, but it's about to get a hell of a lot more. Earlier this week, defense contractor Lockheed Martin

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

of its modular, Advanced Test High Energy Asset (ATHENA) laser system for the US Army -- a weapon that's expected to roll out on the battlefield sometime next year.

If you're not familiar with the ATHENA system, all you really need to know is that Lockheed has been working on it for the past few years, and demonstrated its power a few months ago by

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

with it. This feat was accomplished by firing a sustained 30 kilowatt burst at the vehicle's hood, and burning a hole through the engine block. It's ridiculously powerful -- but power alone isn't its most revolutionary feature.

The thing that makes ATHENA special is the fact that it's built using modular techniques. The weapon combines multiple fiber modules to generate an intense laser beam. According to Lockheed, this layered approach "reduces the chance for mission disruption as a result of a component failure and minimizes the need for frequent maintenance or repair."

Related:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

In addition to being far more reliable, ATHENA's modular design also allows operators to add or subtract laser modules to increase or decrease power as needed. The base model is capable of firing a 60kW beam, but with off-the-shelf commercial fiber laser components, the modules can be linked together to produce lasers of up to 120 kW if the situation calls for it. If you're having trouble wrapping your head around how powerful that is, just take a look at what

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is capable of, and keep in mind that ATHENA is roughly 20,000 times as strong.

In the near term, Lockheed expects its lasers to "provide a complement to traditional kinetic weapons in the battlefield," but their potential future applications are far more dramatic. Moving forward, the company says that ATHENA lasers will help protect soldiers from threats such as "swarms of drones" or "large numbers of rockets and mortars."

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Northrop laser commercial. The laser shown in the garage was used for the Maritime Laser Demonstration (shooting outboard motors on a small boat). Northrop has a one stop shop for HELs and can supply all the necessary elements (laser, beam control, wavefront correction, and optics). Lockheed also can do this now that they are producing coherently coupled fiber lasers. Raytheon is possibly still in the game. Boeing just does beam control although they dabbled in thin disk lasers.

Right now Northrop's JHPSSL laser (105KW) is at White Sands (old THEL site) while the new General Atomics HELLADS (150KW) is being integrated into North Oscura peak also at White Sands. With wavefront control and 1 meter class beam directors, both of these would make short work of missiles and large turbojet powered drones.

strehl said:

Right now Northrop's JHPSSL laser (105KW) is at White Sands (old THEL site) while the new General Atomics HELLADS (150KW) is being integrated into North Oscura peak also at White Sands. With wavefront control and 1 meter class beam directors, both of these would make short work of missiles and large turbojet powered drones.

Click to expand...

Yep...we are going to see this on ships in the relative near term, complimenting other CIWS.

If you can tolerate the video noise of this 30 year old tape recording, it is a very good technical look at the R&D thrusts of the SDI program when it was in its' heyday.