Re:US Navy ready to deploy laser for first time
by jandrewrogers on Tuesday February 18, 2014 @12:14PM
(#7259372)
Yes, this is strictly a point-defense augmentation.
The challenge of Phalanx CIWS is not targeting, it is that you have to (1) predict bullet trajectory in a complex environment that continuously deviates from the "in a vacuum" trajectory and (2) predict the trajectory of the target while the bullet is on its way to the target. In the case of the original Phalanx gun, they compensated for the intrinsic difficulty of this with a high rate of fire.
However, today the CIWS guns are being replaced with small missiles, which solves the problem of hitting the target. Terminal guidance against hypersonic targets was a solved problem twenty years ago; a computer can react much quicker than materials science allows a real object to alter its trajectory in a material way.
The obvious problem with using small missiles for CIWS is that they are relatively expensive and more difficult to store and handle. This is where a laser CIWS system becomes a nice augmentation to both gun and missile CIWS. Tracking targets in real-time with high-precision is a problem solved many years ago so the real challenge is getting sufficient power on target in a practical laser package, which they apparently have figured out.
The challenge of Phalanx CIWS is not targeting, it is that you have to (1) predict bullet trajectory in a complex environment that continuously deviates from the "in a vacuum" trajectory and (2) predict the trajectory of the target while the bullet is on its way to the target. In the case of the original Phalanx gun, they compensated for the intrinsic difficulty of this with a high rate of fire.
However, today the CIWS guns are being replaced with small missiles, which solves the problem of hitting the target. Terminal guidance against hypersonic targets was a solved problem twenty years ago; a computer can react much quicker than materials science allows a real object to alter its trajectory in a material way.
The obvious problem with using small missiles for CIWS is that they are relatively expensive and more difficult to store and handle. This is where a laser CIWS system becomes a nice augmentation to both gun and missile CIWS. Tracking targets in real-time with high-precision is a problem solved many years ago so the real challenge is getting sufficient power on target in a practical laser package, which they apparently have figured out.