The US Navy combat laser program is getting stalled with $55 million per year for prototypes but no combat deployment. The US Navy does not want to start spending billions to deploy small numbers of lasers that will probably live up to expectations of effectiveness. When the US Navy says a weapon system is too expensive, then you can believe it is too expensive. The US Navy is looking to pay $3.4 billion for each new DDGX Destroyer and $7.2 billion for each attack submarine. The Navy has been paying $12B+ for each new aircraft carrier.
The industrial base (commercial) for major sub-systems and components for laser weapon systems is not yet mature when it comes to production capacity.
The US Navy estimates the per unit cost of a 60 kW class laser with relatively mature beam control and combat system integration at moderate production rates will be approximately $100M [million] in limited quantities. For weapons at greater power and/or beam control complexity, the estimates range up to $200M/unit for lasers in the 250 kW class (inclusive of laser, beam director, beam control, power and thermal management, combat system integration, and installation) but with significant uncertainty bounds based on numerous assumptions.
The US Navy has about 300 combat ships. If they were to put one 250 kilowatt combat laser onto each ship that would cost $60 billion.
From a procurement cost perspective, kinetic and non-kinetic weapon system costs are relatively comparable to those of laser systems, ranging from $70M to $150M, with installation costs that vary, depending on whether they are [for] new construction [ships] or back fit [onto existing ships]. After procurement, the costs for engagements by laser weapons are substantially lower than any comparable kinetic system, with estimates ranging from single dollars ($1.15 – 60 kW) to at most several 10’s of dollars per shot (estimated $9.20 for 480 kW).
As the Navy continues to mature Laser Weapon Systems and analyze their integration into the overall combat system, the cost per kill metrics will be refined to specify adequate return on investment.
The Navy had hoped to develop megawatt lasers. Each megawatt laser would likely cost $1 billion.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Nice! You sank his battleship!
SeaRAM CIWS: $25 million for automated launch system & 11 missiles. Each additional missile costs $905,330. LASER cost per round: $0.
This guy’s argument is seriously flawed. But what would one expect out of a blogger with no military procurement chops?
the congressional report on lasers says they are too expensive to deploy now. Yes, the cost per shot of laser is the electricity cost and amortized cost of the life and maintenance of the laser. It is not zero, but what would I expect from someone who is a troll.
https://www.afrl.af.mil/RD/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270769271_Airborne_Laser_Laboratory_departure_from_Kirtland_Air_Force_Base_and_a_brief_history_of_aero-optics
Israel with the help of Lockheed Martin will deploy a less capable 100MW laser in a year or two. Good enough to shoot slow short range rockets and drones from 10 km. The insistence on a system than can do everything on first iteration has its drawbacks.
A laser won’t stop hypersonic missiles, you have only 5-10s to disable the missile and a missile forebody designed to take 1000’s of degrees air temperature, with tremendous air-cooling, adding some ablative protection to missiles would be trivially easy.
Very fast response anti-missile missiles, perhaps on circling high altitude drones for faster response and maybe CIWS for conventional warheads are only ways to defend yourself.
Nonsense they have lasers that can kill hypersonic missile even with that protective coating wen it re-enter . To say that a laser can’t is ridiculous, and if anyone took your advice on how we should protect our selves ,We,ll all be Dead , they don’t have no other real options or choice but to pay the cost 🤨
You only have to burn a hole the size of a quarter and the missile will melt itself.
And in order to do that you need to deliver all that energy TO a quarter sized point on the target. While it’s moving.
Maybe if your 100MW is averaged over a minute, but delivered in a few microseconds…
The beam spot from a laser on an escort ship (not likely to be directly in front of the missile) would be on the side of the missile.
“5-10 seconds”?
What? Hypersonic missiles will be huge honking targets that are spotted at LEAST 30 to 40 seconds out (figure hypersonics will be traveling at a little over 1 mps) by CSG’s. Lasers will light them up early and often, from multiple ships.
Hypersonic missiles are fast, relatively slow to maneuver, stupid and easy to spot.
A single frigate would have a problem with one, as would a single destroyer. But an ESG or CSG would be able to deal with several of them relatively easily. The question is can China build enough hypersonic weapons to overlaod a laser defense system and the answer is, “possibly, with great difficulty”.
Speed of light trumps hypersonic
There’s also the energy budget to consider. yes ships have big power plants, but they are designed and sized to run the systems they were built with. That’s one reason they never tried to refit the old Spruance’s with phased array radars, they couldn’t power them.
The standard 5″/54 can pump out rounds until the ship runs dry, the magazine is integrated with the mount. CIWS is good for 1-2 engagements before it needs to be reloaded, because of it’s ROF. Missiles, again shoot until you’re dry.
What’s the cycle time on these lasers, do you have to let components cool between shots, how long? Continuous energy feed, or wait until you recharge capacitors?
I want the lasers deployed, but I also served through the SM-1/2 generation; where the hardware and software were custom built in small quantities – not a great experience in upgrades or maintenance. Naval designs have screwed up by the numbers too much, Whidbey Island class cylinder alignment; the entire LCS program come to mind in the surface community. Wait three years and see where we are.
This is why we need bigger ships to mount bigger laser systems.
Sounds a bit circular with the first half of the last century, but worked out well enough.
Joking here
A tesla battery would be sufficient for this. Fiber lasers are quite efficient
Batteries.
Fiber Lasers can reach 50% efficiency, so a 100KW laser needs a source of just 200KW, which the Tesla M3 battery can easily gives. The Tesla Semi Battery can easily support a 300KW Laser.
The two main questions are
1. The required burst duration with gives the total number of shouts per minute.
2. Cooling down the Laser from the residual 50% heat, where ships can use the sea water to do that, but ground and airborne platforms will need powerful AC systems.
A war in the Taiwan Straits will be a battle of volume and velocity. Taiwan and allies will quickly run out of munitions.
But unless china is planning on walking their people over on the backs of dead guys floating in the sea it is going to he hard to get an army there. China is never going to do that they will just buy out the US and then Taiwan. Apparently they have the only population of people that actually want to work.
(checks NBF while working weekends)
So – lasers are currently only profitable compared to kinetic weapons if they are actually going to be used to destroy a lot of stuff.
Higher investment but much lower per kill cost. Hard choice…
It’s apparently an easy choice, because our military currently isn’t actually planning for sustained combat, just standing around looking intimidating, and occasionally fighting a 3rd world country then running away leaving behind munitions.
From that perspective, “What’s cheapest to install?” and “What would low tech adversaries find most useful after we run away?” are the operative questions.
Completely true maybe a year ago.
However, now there is a looming invasion of Taiwan and the realization that all conflicts from now on will feature massive swarms of drones that cost maybe $1000 each.
Maybe it would be wise with at least a certain mix of laser platforms with enough power to disable modest drones. This will facilitate some practical experience and development of doctrine without burning the bank accounts.
That sounds suspiciously like common sense. 🧐
That IS the obvious application for lasers, burning down drone swarms. Gonna be hard on the seagull population in war time, of course, since you can’t risk disguised drones. And won’t do anything against the underwater drones.
I have to think that the age of capital ships is passing, they just can’t be hid, and make such valuable targets. Wouldn’t it be lovely to go to war, and find out your adversary had actually bothered implementing Project Thor?
Sad to say, your probably right!
If you are spending $3.4B on a ship that will be at the bottom of the sea a few hours after the war start, it economical to add few hundreds $M to enable them to survive all of the war.