Mysterious Laser Turret Appears on US Navy Destroyer USS Dewey(thedrive.com)
thedrive.com
Mysterious Laser Turret Appears on US Navy Destroyer USS Dewey
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/30941/mysterious-laser-turret-appears-on-us-navy-destroyer-uss-dewey
93 comments
Also it's not really "mysterious" if we know what it is.
Title: Royal Navy deployed laser weapons during the Falklands War
https://newatlas.com/falklands-laser/28574/
https://newatlas.com/falklands-laser/28574/
Can't that baby burn retinas? If that's the case isn't a violation of the Geneva Convention to use that?
AFAIK it's a war crime to deliberately blind people. Incidental blinding is acceptable, as long as the intent is to cleanly kill whatever's being lased.
Similar to how shooting to kill is ok, but shooting to maim is not.
Similar to how shooting to kill is ok, but shooting to maim is not.
Not sure i see the point. Surely gyros can just keep it on track for last known good reading?
How good was that heading? Good enough that the missile can hit the ship with no further adjustments for the rest of the flight? Probably not.
(This is less important if the missile has a nuclear warhead...)
(This is less important if the missile has a nuclear warhead...)
Given how fast missiles are and how slow ships move I can't imagine it being hard.
Between a good gyro, some satelitte positioning I can see it getting a good hit rate even if blind.
And even if you miss just triggering an explosion in roughly the right area will do a fair bit of damage to ship antennae etc
The whole thing strikes me as a bad stopgap till lasers are powerful enough to take down missiles
Between a good gyro, some satelitte positioning I can see it getting a good hit rate even if blind.
And even if you miss just triggering an explosion in roughly the right area will do a fair bit of damage to ship antennae etc
The whole thing strikes me as a bad stopgap till lasers are powerful enough to take down missiles
When I was a kid, we drove up I15 in southern Idaho. There was one place where we topped over this rise, and the road was straight for miles. Way down there in the distance there was an overpass across the interstate. I remember wondering how my dad could aim the car precisely enough to go under that overpass way out there. Now, as an adult, I understand. He didn't aim it that precisely. He steered along the way.
But if you don't steer along the way, and you're off half a degree, say, and you go blind 10 miles out, you miss by 10 miles times sin(1/2 degree), which is 0.09 miles, which is 460 feet. I don't know what the effective radius of an anti-ship missile is, but 460 feet seems to me to be a rather long distance.
That's assuming you just have to worry about aiming accuracy. You could also have things like wind gusts. And the ship could be not just moving, but maneuvering.
But if you don't steer along the way, and you're off half a degree, say, and you go blind 10 miles out, you miss by 10 miles times sin(1/2 degree), which is 0.09 miles, which is 460 feet. I don't know what the effective radius of an anti-ship missile is, but 460 feet seems to me to be a rather long distance.
That's assuming you just have to worry about aiming accuracy. You could also have things like wind gusts. And the ship could be not just moving, but maneuvering.
Suppose a Mach 2.5 (850 m/s) missile aiming at you. You blind it 4km out (about the same distance as Phalanx can engage) (suppose its sea-skimming so coming right onto your side). It takes 4.7 seconds to impact you. A DDG-51 is 150 meters long. If it was aiming center of mass, you need to induce a 75 m change in relative position in 4.7 seconds to cause a miss. This can be accomplished by like 6.8m/s^2 acceleration. Ok, so thats like 0.7G, super won't work.
But say its subsonic (mach 0.9... so like 300 m/s). Now your talking like 13.3 seconds to impact, and now need like 0.85 m/s^2 acceleration to induce a clean miss. Ok cool, that has some utility.
Oh, and totally, its a stop gap. But it's still useful to learn things like... how do gimballed laser systems behave on a ship? What type of maintenance is required? What unexpected interference is induced?
But say its subsonic (mach 0.9... so like 300 m/s). Now your talking like 13.3 seconds to impact, and now need like 0.85 m/s^2 acceleration to induce a clean miss. Ok cool, that has some utility.
Oh, and totally, its a stop gap. But it's still useful to learn things like... how do gimballed laser systems behave on a ship? What type of maintenance is required? What unexpected interference is induced?
Ships move.... Sure you can keep it on track toward open ocean.
Pardon my non-HN tone but...remind me again how this would have prevented 9/11; is useful against cyber-warfare; or can prevent the public's beliefs and decision-making from being influenced by a fistful of dollars and some well-placed digital ads.
We keep spending more and more, and are being outsmarted with less and less. Three-quarters of a trillion dollar (i.e., the USA's DOD budget) is a significant amount of money.
We keep spending more and more, and are being outsmarted with less and less. Three-quarters of a trillion dollar (i.e., the USA's DOD budget) is a significant amount of money.
This new US Navy acronym is going to make googling for Linux installation issues a lot more tricky:
"Ruggedized High Energy Laser (RHEL)"
"Ruggedized High Energy Laser (RHEL)"
"High Energy Laser Counter-ASCM Program (HELCAP)"
I so wanted that to be the Association for Supply Chain Management, but it's really Anti-Ship Cruise Missile.
I so wanted that to be the Association for Supply Chain Management, but it's really Anti-Ship Cruise Missile.
In my experience looking for RHEL always leads to paywalled answers so I search for "centos" instead which 99% of the time applies to my RHEL question.
That is actually a good way to hide public information. Even the best search engines might fail you here.
Boris Johnson has been accused of this. His truely bizarre bus making hobby is one example.
To expand, Boris Johnson heavily promoted a bus manufacturer in Northern Ireland (they went so far as to call them Boris Busses). The company eventually went into administration right during the Brexit fight and were laying off 1,500 people. People speculate in an effort to "SEO" this along with some really damaging news where he was alleged to be having an affair with a model and steering contracts her way, Boris gave a completely bizarre response in an interview:
> Speaking on Talk Radio on Tuesday, the frontrunner to replace Theresa May was asked by the interviewer, Ross Kempsell, what he did to relax.
> Johnson replied: “I like to paint. Or I make things. I have a thing where I make models of buses. What I make is, I get old, I don’t know, wooden crates, and I paint them. It’s a box that’s been used to contain two wine bottles, right, and it will have a dividing thing. And I turn it into a bus."
> “So I put passengers – I paint the passengers enjoying themselves on a wonderful bus – low carbon, of the kind that we brought to the streets of London, reducing C02, reducing nitrous oxide, reducing pollution.”
A few more cases have been ID'ed by people on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/genmon/status/1169719026060320768
> Speaking on Talk Radio on Tuesday, the frontrunner to replace Theresa May was asked by the interviewer, Ross Kempsell, what he did to relax.
> Johnson replied: “I like to paint. Or I make things. I have a thing where I make models of buses. What I make is, I get old, I don’t know, wooden crates, and I paint them. It’s a box that’s been used to contain two wine bottles, right, and it will have a dividing thing. And I turn it into a bus."
> “So I put passengers – I paint the passengers enjoying themselves on a wonderful bus – low carbon, of the kind that we brought to the streets of London, reducing C02, reducing nitrous oxide, reducing pollution.”
A few more cases have been ID'ed by people on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/genmon/status/1169719026060320768
Don't forget the other Boris bus with the claim that Brexit would save £350,000,000 per week.
https://mobile.twitter.com/GrantWhiteTZ/status/1144077131602...
>Boris Johnson has created the #BorisBus situation to bury the fact that three years ago he campaigned with an actual bus, promising Brexit millions for the NHS.
>Boris Johnson has created the #BorisBus situation to bury the fact that three years ago he campaigned with an actual bus, promising Brexit millions for the NHS.
Wonder if there are more examples of this hiding, intentionally or not. I recently could not find the Trinity and Beyond [0] movie on DDG, because all hits were of some family vlog (though I still find it on Google first page).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_and_Beyond
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_and_Beyond
Doubt it's intentional but ISIS springs to mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Sensor_is_Structure
Happens all the time, I don't have links right now but i've seen several instances of individual or companies publishing tonnes of content right after something bad happened (crime or other) to try to push the bad news away from the front page.
Somebody posted a French example recently.
EDIT: There have also been suggestions that the current UK Prime Minister has done this.
EDIT: There have also been suggestions that the current UK Prime Minister has done this.
Rudy Giuliani's company is named Fraud Guarantee. This was apparently chosen to push down search results about one of the co-founders' legal issues.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/giuliani-associate-left-trail-o...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/giuliani-associate-left-trail-o...
Seems incredibly...apt in retrospect.
Counter-Strike: Source
Ah, that is one hell of a documentary.
I hope I still have my copy laying around because it's one of those films that I can watch every few years and be amazed again and again.
Edit: I guess it will not be long before it's even harder to find, but at least the page is archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20190129000701/http://www.atomce...
I hope I still have my copy laying around because it's one of those films that I can watch every few years and be amazed again and again.
Edit: I guess it will not be long before it's even harder to find, but at least the page is archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20190129000701/http://www.atomce...
Also awesome is the motion picture soundtrack! Can still be found on Amazon.
The worst I've run into is back when I was still doing a lot of Cisco networking, and Apple came out with IOS, which was the same name as Cisco's IOS operating system. As I remember, Apple ended up having to license the name.
Seemed like overnight it became nearly impossible to search for Cisco IOS (since many relevant posts didn't call out Cisco by name, since why would you, IOS is obviously Cisco IOS)
Seemed like overnight it became nearly impossible to search for Cisco IOS (since many relevant posts didn't call out Cisco by name, since why would you, IOS is obviously Cisco IOS)
True but only if you're using just RHEL. Usually adding just one word will disambiguate the multiple uses of a word or acronym. RHEL weapon vs RHEL OS for example.
First Google search result I get for “RHEL weapon”:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Red_Hat
And #7:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-n...
But #2-#6 are more what you'd probably expect.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Red_Hat
And #7:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-n...
But #2-#6 are more what you'd probably expect.
Not anymore. Especially not if you google "RHEL laser".
I share the same name as the heads of public relations for two of the largest corporations on Earth. I love the anonymity.
How many possibilities does that leave? You might have just given your real name to a sufficiently motivated researcher, assuming what you said is accurate.
[deleted]
tbh, it will probably make searching for this laser more difficult.
Search “RHEL laser” without quotes
RHELinux pages are unlikely to mention lasers as well. Qualifying searches like this is pretty easy.
RHELinux pages are unlikely to mention lasers as well. Qualifying searches like this is pretty easy.
Until Red Hat comes out with some new enterprise software tool called "Laser".
When I saw this acronym in the article I thought of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enter...
> The system is likely the service's new "ODIN" laser dazzler that is meant to blind enemy optics on ships, boats, aircraft, and missiles.
Couldn't you now just home in on the laser? I feel like I'm missing something.
Couldn't you now just home in on the laser? I feel like I'm missing something.
Not if your optice are totally saturated by the laser. Point a laser at a camera some time, and see if you can tell where it is in the resulting picture. The image will probably be solid red
Sweep a physical occluder across the lens, measure abatement?
You can do that, but a more powerful laser will max out the readings even at maximum occlusion, and it's another mechanical device which can fail.
It's a game of cat and mouse.
It's a game of cat and mouse.
Multiple lasers across multiple ships performing random amplitude modulation. The missile would have to somehow spot attenuate multiple sources at variable intensities.
At the end of the day, everything with sensors is an arms race. We've actually seen this evolution before with the early spinning mirror IR missiles and those glass disco balls on helicopters.
At the end of the day, everything with sensors is an arms race. We've actually seen this evolution before with the early spinning mirror IR missiles and those glass disco balls on helicopters.
So you want your lens covered 99.9% of the time, just in case someone points a laser at it?
Who says you're limited to one? For that matter, if you're just trying to find the direction of the beam, why bother with "good sensor" at all?
Set up a bunch of not-quite-parallel tubes with simple and durable light-sensors in the "deep" end, and whichever sensor measures the highest must be pointed at the light-source.
Set up a bunch of not-quite-parallel tubes with simple and durable light-sensors in the "deep" end, and whichever sensor measures the highest must be pointed at the light-source.
>> Sweep a physical occluder across the lens, measure abatement?
> So you want your lens covered 99.9% of the time, just in case someone points a laser at it?
Don't some missile seekers already work that way?
https://www.ausairpower.net/TE-Sidewinder-94.html:
> The Sidewinder's seeker used an ingeniously clever optical arrangement, with a Cassegrainian mirror fitted with a tilted secondary mirror. The secondary mirror rotated in unison with a reticle, projecting the whole instantaneous field of view of the mirror through the reticle onto a filter/detector assembly. Because the mirror secondary was tilted, rotating it about the missile's axis swept the cone of the mirror's field of view about the missile's axis in a fashion analogous to a conical scanning radar seeker (see diagram).
> So you want your lens covered 99.9% of the time, just in case someone points a laser at it?
Don't some missile seekers already work that way?
https://www.ausairpower.net/TE-Sidewinder-94.html:
> The Sidewinder's seeker used an ingeniously clever optical arrangement, with a Cassegrainian mirror fitted with a tilted secondary mirror. The secondary mirror rotated in unison with a reticle, projecting the whole instantaneous field of view of the mirror through the reticle onto a filter/detector assembly. Because the mirror secondary was tilted, rotating it about the missile's axis swept the cone of the mirror's field of view about the missile's axis in a fashion analogous to a conical scanning radar seeker (see diagram).
Modern systems are Focal Plane Array which is aerospace speak for a typical camera.
Maybe the laser also sweeps.
Yeah, but for this you would use a new kind of laser detector which can take it.
And where exactly can i get "new kind of laser detector".
It's like saying in WW1: Don't build tanks because they will invent anti-tank guns.
It's like saying in WW1: Don't build tanks because they will invent anti-tank guns.
That’s pretty much how all of this works: one side develops better targeting, the other side a counter for that, then a counter to the counter, over and over again.
Like, you mean, an arms race perhaps?
Solid white, actually!
It's like staring at the sun.
Eventually, the Navy will be doing more than "dazzling" and "blinding" enemy optics. The Tactical High Energy Laser project[1] demonstrated that incoming mortars and Katyushas could be shot down. It seems unlikely that this technology was abandoned, albeit it's probably much bulkier and more expensive than the RHEL.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_High_Energy_Laser
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_High_Energy_Laser
Couldn't you just start putting a reflective coating on your mortar rounds?
You need a coating that won’t burn off even if it reflects 99.9% of the beam, and rugged enough to survive being field handled.
Those don’t exist, it will be scratched off well before it’s even used.
Not to mention the cost of such material and the cost loss of scrapping or converting existing inventory won’t make it a viable solution.
The majority of mortars fired at US troops today were likely made in the 60’s and 70’s.
You are better off with simply using mortars in large volleys to saturate the system or simply attacking unprotected targets.
Most rounds fired at US troops can’t penetrate their body armor either it doesn’t stop them from trying not did it force them to switch to armor defeating projectiles.
They just are less effective and hope they’ll either land a lucky shot to the face or lower limbs or a debilitating shot to unprotected areas such as the arms and shoulders.
Those don’t exist, it will be scratched off well before it’s even used.
Not to mention the cost of such material and the cost loss of scrapping or converting existing inventory won’t make it a viable solution.
The majority of mortars fired at US troops today were likely made in the 60’s and 70’s.
You are better off with simply using mortars in large volleys to saturate the system or simply attacking unprotected targets.
Most rounds fired at US troops can’t penetrate their body armor either it doesn’t stop them from trying not did it force them to switch to armor defeating projectiles.
They just are less effective and hope they’ll either land a lucky shot to the face or lower limbs or a debilitating shot to unprotected areas such as the arms and shoulders.
You don't necessarily need the round to survive. If it's reflecting 99.9% of a destructive laser beam, then that poses a risk of that beam bouncing back at the ship and causing damage. It might be a minuscule risk in isolation, but dozens or hundreds of rounds with retroreflectors designed specifically to bounce lasers back whence they came could wreak havoc on all sorts of fragile sensors (including the squishy ones in sailors' eye sockets).
That would make this an illegal weapon system according to the Geneva Convention. Weapons that are intended to injure rather than kill are prohibited.
That’s not the right reading of the convention. The rule is against unnecessary suffering and even excessive lethality. For example hollow point rounds are more effective at killing but solid rounds have the same disabling effect and give the recipient a chance of survival. Hollow point bullets are banned by the convention.
Its also illegal to use excessive calibre bullets against human targets. Even though such large projectiles are much more likely to kill.
The exact phrasing is:
“It is prohibited to employ weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.”
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul...
Its also illegal to use excessive calibre bullets against human targets. Even though such large projectiles are much more likely to kill.
The exact phrasing is:
“It is prohibited to employ weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.”
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul...
A sizable subset of America's past, present, and future adversaries in war have never ratified any portion the Geneva Convention.
Yes, all the sailors on deck managing the sails, climbing the mast and so on. Wait, is this the 19th century still?
"Sailor" is still commonly used (even in official contexts) to describe personnel on modern naval vessels.
Sailors aren't on deck during a battle any more, so are unlikely to be suffering laser reflections (!) from tiny projectiles thousands of yards away.
Most warships (of the non-submersible variety) have windows, last I checked. In fairness, though, that does make it easier to mitigate that issue.
"Those don’t exist, it will be scratched off well before it’s even used"
Not if there is some sort casing around that is discarded once the projectile is in flight
Not if there is some sort casing around that is discarded once the projectile is in flight
Don't even need the casing to be discarded. If the casing gets hit by the laser and gets vaporized, that's fine. The reflective layer underneath then becomes visible.
This may be a dumb question, but surely the escalation is “shoot lasers too” not “try to protect my shots with mirrors”?
So if it were me trying to bypass this system rather than trying to make increasingly complex and expensive projectiles to try and defeat the system I'd just make increasingly cheap projectiles to make it easier to spray the target with them and eventually get some through. The article even mentions that a laser can only point at a single target at a time. To your point if you also target the defensive system you're bound to sooner or later damage the system with one you managed to get through. Seems to me that this system is easily defeated with tactics.
It would be kind of hard to fire a laser over obstacles like a mortar. Unless, perhaps, you send up a attach a mirror to a balloon and fly it over the battlefield so you can bounce your laser. :)
The same goes for Katyushas (rockets). Most of them have a range that's well over the horizon, so it would be difficult to fill the same use case with a laser.
The same goes for Katyushas (rockets). Most of them have a range that's well over the horizon, so it would be difficult to fill the same use case with a laser.
It is almost impossible to create a coating that can reflect high-power laser pulses. Even if the coating reflects 99.9% of the light, it absorbs 0.1% of the light. When we are talking about laser pulses strong enough to melt steel projectiles, the absorbed light will quickly destroy the coating and then the projectile is vulnerable again. Also, the coating has to survive the launch/firing of the projectile without getting hazed.
I was using pulse lasers in the lab and traditional silver mirrors would get damaged by pulse energies over 100mJ. They would just turn black. The solution was to use interference mirrors for the exact wavelengths of the beam to reflect, which wouldn't have any absorption and such could survive large pulse energies. But those mirrors are limited to the exact wavelength at precise angles.
I was using pulse lasers in the lab and traditional silver mirrors would get damaged by pulse energies over 100mJ. They would just turn black. The solution was to use interference mirrors for the exact wavelengths of the beam to reflect, which wouldn't have any absorption and such could survive large pulse energies. But those mirrors are limited to the exact wavelength at precise angles.
You need to find out the wavelength of the laser.
Once you know the wavelength you can design a reflective shell around the projectile. Certain ceramics with proper coating are really good in scattering energy and are extremely resistant to heat.
> You need to find out the wavelength of the laser. Once you know the wavelength you can design a reflective shell around the projectile. Certain ceramics with proper coating are really good in scattering energy and are extremely resistant to heat.
That sounds impractical. Either you're trying to coat shells on demand in wartime, or stocking extra quantities targeted to this or that wavelength. If you're already stocking extra ammunition, it sounds better to just overwhelm the defensive system with more shells, like another commenter suggested.
If you're going to design something new, maybe something more like a MIRV launcher that fires three shells in the time it currently takes to fire one.
That sounds impractical. Either you're trying to coat shells on demand in wartime, or stocking extra quantities targeted to this or that wavelength. If you're already stocking extra ammunition, it sounds better to just overwhelm the defensive system with more shells, like another commenter suggested.
If you're going to design something new, maybe something more like a MIRV launcher that fires three shells in the time it currently takes to fire one.
It's likely that your opponent is fielding only a limited number of laser projectile countermeasure systems, and also likely that they are related and only using a limited number of wavelengths.
But yeah, just throw a bunch of things and swamp their targeting systems.
But yeah, just throw a bunch of things and swamp their targeting systems.
Had the same question, the answer is yes BUT you would have to accomplish the following:
- reflect every part of the spectrum that the laser can produce (idk if military lasers operate in the visible part of the spectrum)
- keep the coating clean enough throughout flight to maintain reflectivity
- meet the same requirements as the current coating which probably includes aerodynamics, heat resistance, etc.
Idk if such a material exists, but I'm sure every country building lasers is also working on the defensive side as well.
- reflect every part of the spectrum that the laser can produce (idk if military lasers operate in the visible part of the spectrum)
- keep the coating clean enough throughout flight to maintain reflectivity
- meet the same requirements as the current coating which probably includes aerodynamics, heat resistance, etc.
Idk if such a material exists, but I'm sure every country building lasers is also working on the defensive side as well.
The coating on it would have to reflect the entire EM spectrum. Or whatever frequency a LASER device weapon would use.
This is a super stupid question, but in the rendering it looks like the turret only has a ~180 degree turning range. It can't point behind the ship because there's a giant wall behind it. So as the enemy...can't I just shoot the back of the ship?
Obviously the solution here is to put another turret behind the ship, but is that actually the plan or am I missing something? Do missiles always come from the front of the ship for some reason?
Obviously the solution here is to put another turret behind the ship, but is that actually the plan or am I missing something? Do missiles always come from the front of the ship for some reason?
Each Burke as a fore and aft mounting point for a point defense system. Flight I and Flight II ships have a 20mm Phalanx system mounted there. Flight IIA ships (which the Dewey is one of) were originally built without point defense guns because they were fitted with the Evolved Sea Sparrow point defense missile system (carried in the vertical launch cells), but the Navy later decided to retrofit a Phalanx turret onto the aft mounting point of the Flight IIA ships. I have no idea why they only felt the need to have the gun on the stern arc.
Presumably if a point defense laser reaches operational status it would be fitted to both PD mounting points.
Presumably if a point defense laser reaches operational status it would be fitted to both PD mounting points.
They are constrained by ship design and efficiently tradeoffs. It's a big space/weight/manning requirement for each system. No one is really worried about missile attacks except from on the beam and above, so mounted high and aft is a decent compromise. Personally I rather carry more ESSM reloads in the magazine than cwis rounds.
Not a stupid question at all. Weapon systems all have various areas where they are optimum and where they are at their weakest. In ship to ship battles, maneuvering is slow so its difficult to line up behind a ship like it is with a plane. Even so, if this test system works I expect there would be a matching version on the stern.
Frank Dunnigan's "How to Make War", which is putatively about how to develop war games, goes into some depth of comparing offensive versus defensive impact of various weapon systems. It makes for an interesting read.
Frank Dunnigan's "How to Make War", which is putatively about how to develop war games, goes into some depth of comparing offensive versus defensive impact of various weapon systems. It makes for an interesting read.
[deleted]
many destroyers (including world war 2) have only forward main guns (usually 1 or 2). I can only speak from my experience playing naval ship games. Destroyers are very small but nimble ships. if you need to fire from aft guns, you already lost. Space is precious, better to have something like a helipad back there than another gun you'll never need, in my limited opinion on naval ships.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/images/...
That one is stationed in my hometown
That one is stationed in my hometown
"New laser turret" doesn't have the same cachet as "mysterious laser turret" I guess.