Deal inked in US Navy 'R2-D2' raygun robo-turret plan One of the most critical questions in the world of seagoing death-ray technology today - that is, who would be selected to develop swivelling "R2-D2" robotic laser blaster gun turrets for US Navy warships - has now been answered. American weaponry megacorp Northrop Grumman, makers of the first electric solid-state "battle …
A traditional Phalanx has heat issues of its own (due to the rapid firing of projectile shells)--the Gatling design helps keep the barrels from overheating, but the unit as a whole probably deals with a considerable amount of heat. Now, is it equivalent to the 400kW waste heat from a laser version? Don't know. Jury's still out.
As for rain and fog, it will probably depend on the characteristics of the laser. One that's focused enough and powerful enough will probably deal with atmospheric water (rain and/or fog) quickly enough (IOW, anything in the beam evaporates) to still be effective.
Re: Heat
This is just a guess, mind you, but when you're sitting in the middle of the ocean, it would seam to me that finding a heat sink isn't high among your worries. Now, if they start using these on land, it may be a bit different, but you also have to remember that they will probably be fired in pulses, so you're still probably talking about considerably less than 400KW sustained heat output. Just liquid cool the damn thing and then use a HUGE radiator.
Flames, because that's what you'll get if the coolant boils off.
-d
The fire control and targetting stuff for a laser is much simpler and probably faster because:
1. The laser beam doesn't drop with distance, so no need to correct for that, which makes getting on target in the vertical axis is simpler
2. It arrives at the target almost instantaneously (i.e. the speed of light vs. a few thousand feet/sec), so the need to account for the target's movement is much reduced, which means that getting on target in the horizontal axis is simpler
All in all, I would suspect that Gatling guns would be rapidly displaced in most applications if this stuff actually works.
" ...and wouldn't use up space in the ship's magazines."
Aside from the presumably astronomical rent in ship's magazines, there's also that problem that ammunition is to some degree or another what I like to call "explody". So lasers have the advantage that keeping them fed doesn't mean storing a steady supply of small bombs in a room on your boat. (Just fuel for the generators.)
Paris, because she's like a laser in more ways than you might think at first.
That would be Scotland if anyone cares which happens to be appart of quite a large European Country called the UK. If they ever get full independance (for all of 5 min until they get injested in to Europe with even less powers) then you can call them some insignificant blip on the map of Europe.
Lets hope these carriers actually get built and hte RAF and Army realise that without the Navy the UK is screwed if we ever need our armed forces some place else.
Spoken from Sunny Snowy, hot wet and windy Scotland
You'd think that these things would cause a bit of a paradigm shift in warfare. Its only a matter of time before you get a practical range of 10K out of these things. Put a decent radar and you'll cover a heck of a lot of airspace. Only problem that I see, is some idiot tripping over your power cord.
Actually the 20mm (or 25mm) mag is a pretty small one. And there's still the below decks equipment space for CIWS (a.k.a. Phalanx) that's still needed, and maybe more for below-deck laser hardware compared to the current CIWS gattling gun, which is all above-deck. So, all in all, I don't think there's much space to be saved, if any.
100kW, does that amount to a Light laser? We could mount five of these then onto an 80 tons Charger and have invented the white elephant. Though the sorry remains of FASA might sue us.
Still, I´d wait a couple of years and get a medium Las on a Locust.
anyway: I, for one, Welcome Mr. Grayson "Death" Carlyle.
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