“Real Genius” – the Navy version

Rob - 

The Navy appears to be another step closer in developing a new class of super-weapon, one that promises to significantly change the naval battlespace of the future.

Since the first shipboard cannons were fired in anger, to today’s Mach 3 sea-skimming missiles, naval ships have been vulnerable to attack by the sheer reality that hitting a small, supersonic target from a moving ship is extremely difficult to do. Especially if that target is headed in your direction.

For the past 30 years or so, the US Navy’s Aegis missile defense system has been very effective at mitigating this threat through it’s use of ultra-high power X-band phased array radars and the SM-2 missile system. Unfortunately, this system is not failsafe and terrible accidents have occurred, such as when the USS Vincennes misidentified and shot down an Iranian Airbus in 1988.

It all comes down to reaction time. How much time does the watch stander have to make a decision before they run out of options?

With today’s technology, that timeframe can be fractions of a second, or in some cases, it’s already game over by the time a target is acquired.

A recent technological breakthrough at Los Alamos National Laboratory may be changing all that and paving the way for a 1-Megawatt shipboard laser gun. This system would be capable of engaging multiple targets at the speed of light without running out of ammunition.

Read more...

NAVSEA

Posted via http://batavia08.posterous.com batavia08's posterous