Some
of the Navy's futuristic weapons sound like something out of "Star
Wars," with lasers
designed to shoot down aerial drones and electric guns that fire projectiles at
hypersonic speeds.
That future is now. The
Navy plans to deploy its first laser on a ship later this year, and it
intends to test an electromagnetic rail gun prototype aboard a vessel within
two years. For the Navy, it's not so
much about the whiz-bang technology as it is about the economics of such
armaments. Both costs pennies on the dollar compared with missiles and smart
bombs, and the weapons can be fired continuously, unlike missiles and bombs,
which eventually run out.
"It
fundamentally changes the way we fight," said Capt. Mike Ziv, program
manager for directed energy and electric weapon systems for the Naval Sea
Systems Command. The Navy's laser technology has evolved to the point that a
prototype to be deployed aboard the USS Ponce this summer can be operated by a
single sailor, he said.
The
solid-state Laser Weapon System is designed to target what the Navy describes
as "asymmetrical threats." Those include aerial drones, speed boats
and swarm boats, all potential threats to warships in the Persian Gulf, where
the Ponce, a floating staging base, is set to be deployed. Rail guns, which
have been tested on land in Virginia, fire a projectile at six or seven times
the speed of sound enough velocity to cause severe damage.
The
Navy sees them as replacing or supplementing old-school guns, firing lethal
projectiles from long distances. But both systems have shortcomings. Lasers
tend to loser their effectiveness if it's raining, if it's dusty, or if there's
turbulence in the atmosphere, and the rail gun requires vast amount of
electricity to launch the projectile, said Loren Thompson, defence analyst at
the Lexington Institute. "The Navy says it's found ways to deal with use
of lasers in bad weather, but there's little doubt that the range of the weapon
would be reduced by clouds, dust or precipitation," he said.