State of Navy’s shipboard laser efforts is embarrassing, says top fleet commander
More Navy leaders as of late have been publicly bemoaning the service's inability to scale functional laser weapon systems.
More Navy leaders as of late have been publicly bemoaning the service's inability to scale functional laser weapon systems.
There's no lack of excitement in the Navy about the idea of an operational laser on a ship underway, but the service must be more "intellectually honest" about what's possible, Rear Adm. Fred Pyle said at the Surface Navy Association's annual symposium.
The laser is scheduled for at-sea tests on the destroyer Preble in fiscal 2023.
The US Navy answers questions about its roadmap for employing electric and battery power for lasers, radars, and propulsion over the next two decades.
"So I think [the concept of integration is] so simple and yet so hard to achieve," Northrop VP Walsmith said. "You need to be able to integrate applications, whether they're your own or someone else's, with ease and simplicity. It is easy to say. It's very hard to engineer."
Impressed by tests against low-flying drones, the services are collaborating to increase both power and precision to take on tougher threats.
WASHINGTON: By 2020, for the first time, the US Navy will put a lethal laser on a warship. “This is a very big deal,” said Mark Gunzinger of the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments, a longtime advocate of lasers. “It is clear evidence of the progress that has been made over the last several years […]