In the past six years, the Navy has invested about 40 million dollars in the research and development of laser pointer short-range weapon systems, and is studying the integration of the Phalanx system and the laser weapon system. The future development plan is that by 2017 to 2021, the Navy will be heavily equipped with this short-range defense system with an effective range of about 1.6 kilometers.
In recent years, the technology of unmanned aircraft and unmanned ships has developed rapidly. How to deal with these small targets, which are small in size and not fast, but relatively large in number, poses a problem for the ambitious navy to conduct coastal operations. It is very uneconomical to use standard anti-aircraft missiles or anti-aircraft missiles such as rams, and use millions of missiles to plant unmanned aircrafts worth thousands or even hundreds of dollars.
It will consume a lot of ammunition to fight with a manned phalanx. Machine guns and small machine guns are used to fight. The hit rate is very low when manned and weapons are on a swaying ship. A few hundred rounds may not be able to destroy it. The cost of each shot of the system is only tens of cents (in the propaganda materials, it is only 59 cents), which is even lower than a shell, and it is very economical without considering the consumption of ammunition.
The laser short-range defense system has now entered a mature development stage. The purchase price of the entire system is only about 15-17 million US dollars, which is much cheaper than the existing Phalanx system, which is about 35 million US dollars. It is not high, but the price of a single missile has reached about 1 million US dollars, plus green laser pointer weapons do not require ammunition replenishment.
In fact, it has not been integrated into the whole ship’s power grid. It has only used its own small generator to achieve power supply. Currently, it has the ability to continuously irradiate at full power for 2 minutes, and it can be filled with 80% within 2 hours With the current performance of the test, it only takes less than 3 seconds to destroy an unmanned aircraft. The economy and availability of the system are incomparable to Ram and Phalanx.
The role of laser weapons in low-intensity conflicts for small targets such as unmanned aircraft has a very large market. With the development of high-energy fiber lasers and free electron lasers, the role of Phalanx and Ram missiles will gradually be replaced in the future.
The laser weapon has been on the ship, and in the future close confrontation, it is very likely that the opposing party’s optical equipment, radar, ammunition, flags and even personnel will be destroyed silently, without even evidence.