Video: Raytheon's Ship-Mounted Laser Weapon Incinerates a UAV in Flight

Every kid on the block is going to want one!

what is that large white bulb -- a targeting radar, or is it part of the laser?

also, in the video -- is that white line debris streaming away from the target, or the laser ionizing the air?

That large white bulb is part of the current Phalanx system which uses a radar and satellite guided Gatling gun to shoot down missiles and planes. That large white bubble dome houses the radar system.

The artists' rendering of the laser system simply changes the look of the actual weapon and adding a laser beam. Chopped picture of a Phalanx system basically.

--GTO--

deegeezee, I think this video was done with IR thermal camera so thats why you are seeing the laser beam.

I'm heading up to Great Lakes for NROTC orientation in about two weeks. I wonder, will I be issued my laser immediately, or do I have to wait for a bit?

thanks, GTO and Talon!

Yeah this seams like a pointless replacement of good ol' Puff. I'm telling you, a laser made of bullets will always be more effective than it's light made counterparts. The targeting systems are what's most important. We can already shoot bullets 4 inches apart from each other in a sweeping arc through whatever it's targets flight trajectory is. You can shoot a quarter out of the air from a mile away with our current systems and I just don't see the need to upgrade.

A_Rock: Try to think more than 2 seconds into the future. While we are still making advances with projectile weapons, they will eventfully reach a psychical limit. In many cases we are reaching stale mates, either with our body army NOT protecting, or armor plating protecting from everything. There are about 1000000 reasons we are moving to energy based weapons. I will explain two as to not explode your brain. 1: Our navy is slowly transforming into a 100% electrical based navy. We will give up the need for gas completely. The idea is that a warship can use electricity for its electric rail-guns, electric engines, and electrical laser beams do-dads. 2: While projectile weapons still have a while till we perfect them, energy based system has FAR more potential. When you are walking around in iron man\halo armor suit that stops just about any bullet fired at it, I will simply fire my laser melt a hole through your head, or shoot a directed emp cannon at you (which people are working on). I can see your great x15 grandfather sitting there. Why do we need guns? this bow and arrow works just fine, its quiet, it doesn't scare the other animals away, and I can make it out of junk I found in the woods.

Sorry,Inaka_rob,I'm with A_Rock on this one.The gatling is proven and tested,and anything meeting it's tungsten/d.u. slugs head-on is not going to survive the encounter.
Lasers are the new kid on the block,and if the video showing it shooting down the drone is any indication,it is sorely lacking in effectiveness.Much more power is needed to rapidly destroy a target.
Real threats are sea-skimming supersonic missiles,which hit their targets seconds after detection.You would need a laser in the multi megawatt range to fry such a missile in time.

@InikaRob
I believe I'm thinking a little farther then 2 seconds... more like 35 years. It will take a very long time to get our energy storage capabilities high enough to support a fully electric navy of the sort you are imagining. Do you know how much fuel my squadron used per month? Just one squadron. $1,954,200.71 a MONTH. That was when fuel was less then half of what it is now. You show me a way to get that much energy to our equipment in anything but fossil and nuclear fuels. Then add lasers, rail guns, emp weapons, mech-suites and the other stuff I know we both want (but you are giving me a hard time for belittling) and you find yourself in an energy pickle. The only fuel dense enough to work at those levels of output is anti-matter. Until we can find a way to store anti-mater safely in combination with harnessing the initial massive energy sources necessary to produce the anti-matter, it just won't happen. We will have to combine extremely ambitious geo-thermal energy production with massive and I mean massive space and moon solar arrays. That is going to take decades to get rolling and it won't be until about 2060-80 that a large world conflict will inevitably force the technologies onto the scene en-mass. Up until that point it will all still be experiments and flights of fancy. I'm tired and ranting but I hope you get the point that I don't lack foresight. I probably think of realistic predictions of the future more then anyone that doesn't work with Ray Kurzweil.
Hater :P

P.S. my calculation for the fuel consumption costs of my squadron was short. It should be just short of double that... about 3.9 mil. I forgot to take into consideration in my math that our birds would generally do two to three and not just one flight a day. The point being... a lot of fuel.

And when you run out of bullets in you Gatling gun...

OH! Thats why they want to use it. Infinite ammo. It is true that with just the basic Li-ion batteries we could not ever power a battle ship really well, but may I direct you to this

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-07/using-extreme-pressure-researchers-create-novel-material-stores-massive-amounts-energy

"the most condensed form of energy storage outside of nuclear energy"

So we are getting really close.

thor09797: First,you only fire the gatling for seconds at a time-if it doesn't work the first time,you don't have to worry about reloading.Second,a ship is a large vehicle,room for thousands and thousands of rounds.

Yeah I am willing to bet you will have longer firing times with bullets for quite a while.

Now all we need is to strap some of these puppies on the heads of some sharks and ask for.... ONE MILLION DOLLARS

Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.

That is not the picture of the laser, simply a Phalanx CIWS. I guess it's the artist interpretation of the weapon.

I wonder how the laser penetrates clouds and rain since it is a concentrated beam of light.

Under perfect conditions the Patriot missiles worked, but when put in the real world situations they failed.

We all remember watching them hit the Scud missiles in Israel only to find out later the Scud has already broken into pieces and the Patriot was hitting the rubble.

I love this propaganda, don't forget it's sponsored by the oil giant Shell.

Your free to say what you want as long as it's what we want to hear. I love those deals.

I want one just so could blind some pilots, kidding. Enough whining for today.

It looks like a cool toy.

Clouds/snow/smoke are,on second thought,major headaches for laser weapons.I guess you could keep the Phalanx Gatling gun on standby for cloudy days,that would be a very expensive option.
This isn't a problem for Boeing's airborne ICBM blaster,which would operate high above atmospheric haze to kill missiles in the boost phase.

That is from an old sci-fi movie from the 50s or early 60s.
I remember the spaceship shooting lasers at ground targets.

The most important and effective inventions were found by accident while working on something for a different reason and outcome. Let's just keep moving forward on our experiments with these lasers and who knows what may come of it.
Look at what microwave radar did for us when the scientist realized his Hershey bar melted in his pocket when he walked by it. wallah..........Microwave ovens.!!!! and there are many more examples of this sort of accidental discovery.

i wonder when they come out will the be ready for home use. image what u could do with one if it was pocket sized all the damage u could do.

What happens when China (or Iran) launches 15 Dong Feng 21D missiles from 15 different directions simultaneously?

Big BIG bada boom despite bullets or lasers.

AFAIK the laser phalanx's main customer will be the army, yes the ARMY. Why? Well because the Army uses normal phalanxes to defend bases against mortars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, whats the problem with bullets? Because bullets eventually fall to earth. If it hits some kid, you got a major PR problem. Lots of bases are situated inside cities so there are lots of potential victims.

The bullets they use now are supposed to self destruct but some dont.

This is my blog

magos-biologis.blogspot.com

Val Kilmer, Real Genius, Lawyered.

I definitely think that laser weapons are a good naval investment, as the lasers are the best defense against supersonic and hypersonic missiles, things projectiles just can't effectively defend us against at short to medium ranges.

To a previous comment (this has an application):
"I can see your great x15 grandfather sitting there. Why do we need guns? this bow and arrow works just fine, its quiet, it doesn't scare the other animals away, and I can make it out of junk I found in the woods."

I'm sorry to disagree, but for a long while the bow and arrow was the supreme weapon. Of course some bows weren't as good as others (such as the crossbow) but the English warbow (longbow) was the absolute best weapon until the 19th century. How can I say that? Well, here's why: In the Middle Ages, the English archer would train from childhood in order to ultimately be able to fire a longbow with a draw weight of 120-140 lbs--strong enough to penetrate the best armor at ranges greater than 100 yds, and would be able to aim precisely and accurately even at long distances, not to mention being extremely swift loading. So, why the switch to muskets (rifles came later)? Well, it took so much training to be an effective archer, and so little training to fire a musket, that most nations just dropped the warbow entirely. However, even though it was no longer used, in the hands of a practiced archer the warbow was unmatched in accuracy until rifling was developed (but rifling couldn't be used on military arms until the mid 19th century due to technical problems), and in reloading speed until the late 19th century when cartridge magazines were developed. It penetrated armor just as well as bullets, so the entire reason for the switch was ease of use over effectiveness. Too bad the warbow was dropped so quickly!

Sorry for the long paragraph...I just really like longbows and had to say something. There is an application, however. While less-effective muskets replaced heavy warbows for ease of use, lasers don't really have any disavantages when compared against Gatling guns, (ect) besides additional cost and energy usage and they will be indispensable in missile interception. However, the developers of these lasers have taken energy usage into account, and I'm sure they have a solution for storing large amounts of energy.