FARK.com: (7689827) The coolest video of the Navy shooting down a drone with a laser you'll see all day

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		The coolest video of the Navy shooting down a drone with a laser you'll see all day (theverge.com)		4
		More: Cool, U.S. Navy, laser weapon, Office of Naval Research, Spencer Ackerman, USS Ponce, Danger Room

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9438 clicks; posted to Main » on 09 Apr 2013 at 8:59 AM | Favorite | Watch | share:

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Voiceofreason01		2013-04-09 11:36:27 AM

1 votes:

Quantum Apostrophe: Saw it ten years ago. Twenty years ago. Thirty years ago. Every once in a while defense contractors need to get some more delicious pork and they dust off the old Star Wars junk and add a new capacitor here, a new coil there. In the meantime, the despicable enemy blows up a 20$ bag of cement in front of you and unleashes his arsenal of WWII surplus rockets.

Cheap and plenty beats unique and expensive every time.

This isn't some pie in the sky super experimental weapon, this is a prototype of a deployable weapon. The whole point is that the laser doesn't need to be reloaded and can keep firing as long as you can provide power and dissipate heat. So when someone fires 100 WWII surplus rockets from as many small speed boats you can keep shooting them down and burning the boats even after your Phallax CIWS is out of ammo.

mbillips		2013-04-09 10:29:51 AM

1 votes:

indarwinsshadow: Ok, I've always wondered how do they counter the problem of atmospheric conditions like rain or snow? A coherent beam is going to get bounced around a lot in the pouring rain or a snow storm. So, if you're target is km's away and 30% -/+ of your beams energy is gone through occulation, what do you do? Go to plan B?

Yes. The laser is a potentially non-lethal response to small, inexpensive threats. Instead of using a million-dollar missile on a patrol craft, you can burn the engine out of it, or toast its fire control radars, for about a dollar. Same thing with drones; you can knock out their visual sensors without actually shooting them down, and it costs practically nothing. If conditions aren't good for the laser, you go to your backup plan of guns and missiles.

Kibbler		2013-04-09 09:06:24 AM

1 votes:

Next year: The US has annonced plans to sell its directed energy weapon systems to foreign countries. Thus rendering its drone program void. But some people will make some nice coin.