Shipbucket

I didn't even know lasers were workable - I thought most of the prototypes were just mildly successful and that we'd be sticking with proper (i.e., manly) ways of killing things (like 40mm Bofors).

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

I confirm it (I "play" wih high power lasers since 1988...)

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Lazer_One


Lazer_One's Worlist - Updated 2021

Documentation is always welcome here

Lazer_One's Blog

PS: the Airborne laser project has been DEFINETELY closed last year...

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Lazer_One


Lazer_One's Worlist - Updated 2021

Documentation is always welcome here

Lazer_One's Blog

Lasers have been the most talked about wonder weapon since the 1970s and despite several efforts by the Americans and Soviets (and probably other military powers too) have failed to produce anything practical. A system than fills a 747 or C-130 cargo bay is not exactly lightweight and practical. It would be interesting to compare the firepower of a C-130 laser system to, say, a AC-130. More clinical but probably far less bang per buck. In terms of the high development costs and investments the returns have been poor in comparison with modern gun and missiles development. Maybe by 2022, but then how often have we heard by 1990, by 2000, by 2010 etc...

Generally I feel the USN would probably be more effective with small ships, but like in the UK the lure of air-defence destroyers seems to influence the desk sailors more than general workhouse frigates. But then with more Asian nations copying the West and building more DDGs the Western response will be to match them - a never ending circle.

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English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Did you read Erik_T's article linked earlier in the thread. It addresses a lot of you concerns. Some highlights:

- Laser weapons are far cheaper than pretty much any weapon per warshot. It essentially has unlimited ammunition (the only limit being onboard fuel for the generators), requires no magazine, and each discharge of the weapon is measured in cents. Compare that to the ESSM which is $800K apiece and the SM2 at $350K apiece. Assuming a vessel like the FFLX has One VLS block quad packed with ESSM and that is $26M in inventory tied up on one platform in one place (wow, now that I think amount it I might be able to reduce the FFLX VLS, I forgot about quad packing!). If a DDG is armed with half SM2s thats $16M.

- As mentioned no magazine, which means no large chamber full of warheads and rocket propellant waiting around to become a catastrophic fireball, nor any of the expensive and bulky systems needed to keep it from becoming that catastrophic fireball. Granted laser systems have a good bit of bulk in their systems but probably not enough to fill the entirety of a VLS magazine on most ships and you have significantly more leeway on where you put it.

Those two above make me inclined to consider the current costs a bargain. Especially compared to other systems in their infancy. How much money did we poor into missile technology from the 40s to the 60s before we had a really capable SAM system? And as for bulk, as I mentioned it would be hard to beat the Terrier or Tartar systems when it comes to being space hogs. The YAL-1 is in a 757, but it does not fill it. You will note the internal systems are located throughout the plane with significant empty space which I imagine is due to balance issues, they need that airframe more for life capacity than volume. And it is a system that blows up ballistic missiles from hundreds of miles away!

Just my two cents, I think the expense so far is minimal compared to other weapons. Time for development is not particularly relevant either. It was nearly 30 years from the first fielded ship board aircraft before they became a real combat potent weapon. Missles took a similar time to get up to snuff. And both of those had the advantage of multiple wars/Cold War to hasten their development as well as prompt their introduction well before their operational effectiveness reached what current lasers provide relative, or in other words we have the luxury to be picky. They are coming baby!

Lasers have one very big disadvantage, they lack a kinetic power.

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

And could be easily countered by covering your aircraft/weapons in highly polished mirrors.......

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Mirrors are impractical since most missiles can't be angular due to aerodynamics and thus won't be terribly effective in reflection. Combined with other methods it would be helpful.

Alblative armor is a possibility, which is basically a layer of material designed to sacrifice itself in order to protect the missile. Missiles using this would need to be very large so they have enough material to sacrifice.

Constant rotation can also help as it means the laser would have to interact with a cross section of the missile instead of a single spot, but that is only effective if the laser is shooting at the side of the missile and small missiles simply wouldn't expand the area enough to delay destruction more than a few seconds.

Another defense considered for actual ships against lasers is good old smoke screens or other particle or gasceous barrier that will interfere with the beam enough to render it useless or at least severely degrade it. Missiles could outpace the barrier in seconds so its not useful for them.

One of the weaknesses of any missile armor, however, is that you can't armor the seeker and even non destructive lasers can reliable fry a seeker head.
Which is important especially to point defense as you don't just want to disable it, you want to make sure the resulting slag doesn't continue into your ship, possibly with a still intact warhead. Luckly missiles generally have lots of rocket fuel that reacts to super heating rather poorly, the same goes with warheads. Laser guided bombs don't have rocket fuel however...

It' an issue, for certain.

Not bathroom/discoball type mirrors, but a reflective chrome-like finish I meant.

What about multiple incoming missiles? I'm no expert, but a missile defence system can presumably engage several incoming ASM/SSMs simultaneously; the laser - like a regular gun - could only target one at a time. An advantage of missiles over lasers in a defence situation?

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Crome has minimal reflective properties from a physics standpoint, it would be fried instantly. Metal mirror are not the way you want to go.

You would want "batheroom" type mirrors as in flat so it will more effectivly deflect the mean, but obvioulsy made of materials that could readily withstand the forces of a laser.
Thats true, but you need to look at salvo size and generation. The SPY/AEGIS system for instance can only have a finite number of missiles in the air at any one time as a function of illumination/guidance and the physical time it takes to launch and then manuever the missles to a threat.

A laser can only shoot one target at a time but it only needs to be engaged with any single target for seconds, and its engagement time is instantaneous.

So lets say you have a detection to impact window for an incoming missile of 5 minutes. If its a 10 second dwell time to engage and destroy a target with a laser plus 5 seconds to change targets you are talking 20 shots.

If its the same target for a current DDG51 it has to worry about a few things.

1.) The laser can shoot at a target as soon as it is detected, the missile has to factor in travel time and boost/tip over manuever delay which reduces the engagement window on the front end.

2.) The boost/tip over manuever means that there is a minimum engagement range around the ship before which the missile is incapable of intercepting which reduces the engagement window on the back end. The laser can engage a missle up until it enters its cutouts or it impacts the hull.

The above two are probably going to reduce the engagement window of that missle to three minutes.

3.) There is no missle system out there that can manage 20 outgoong missiles simuletaneously, so right off the bat the laser is going to have more opportunities to engage than a missle. Even if they could guide 20 missiles no launcher can launch that many at once, meaning your shots will be stagared somewhat just like a laser weapon. Also note that most doctrine calls for shooting two missiles at each incoming target, and sometimes two more even before the first two have engaged (this is because of the delay between firing an engaging, for fast moving ASMs if you wait for engagement and the assessment of he first two missiles fired there won't be a window left to reengage)

4.) You can have multiple salvo for missiles once the first group fails to destroy the target and frees up guidance resources, but then you have to add in the travel times again for that second salvo which as I stated above very well might already be outside the window.

5.) If you are shooting multiple missiles at an incoming ASM simuletaneously (and you will be) You are probably going to waste one (or three if you sent out that second salvo) if you get a hit with the first shot. A laser doesn't have this problem, each shot is a known kill or not and you don't need redundany in each salvo. This is also important because laser ammo is unlimited, you only have a few dozen missiles max.

The advantage of a missile systms is that you can, if you have a target that can provide counter fire, have multiple weapons arrive simultaneously (and sometimes from different directions AKA Harpoon) to overwhelm defense resources, lasers can't do this as they are single shot unless you have more than one. But as noted above if that defense resourse is a laser the time between shots is so small you would need a lot to overwhem even a single laser.