Ship and Aircraft Laser Systems - Now, Now, Now, Please!

Interesting stuff from Lockheed Martin Harnessing the Power of Lasers

Our technology today is ready to defend against small rockets, artillery shells and mortars, small unmanned aerial vehicles, small attack boats and lightweight ground vehicles that are approximately a mile way. As fiber laser power levels increase, our systems will be able to disable larger threats and do so across greater distances. When operated in conjunction with kinetic energy systems, these systems can serve as a force multiplier.

Coming soon to an Arleigh Burke destroyer, Lockheed Martin’s HELIOS Laser Weapon System Takes Step Toward Ship Integration

Later this year, the Navy plans to install a production high-energy solid-state laser system on board a West Coast Arleigh Burke–class guided-missile destroyer (DDG). The system, now called the High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) unit, was developed as increment 1 of the Surface Navy Laser Weapon System program.

Vice Admiral Ron Boxall says the funding is already in place for HELIOS installation on board a Flight IIA ship.

Lockheed Martin’s Integrated Warfare Sensor Systems developed the HELIOS under a $150 million contract awarded in January 2018 for one system for ship installation and a second for land-based testing. The award includes options for 14 more.

Joe Ottaviano, the company’s business development director, says the system went through critical design review and factory qualification testing last year. It was delivered to a Navy test site in December. He says it already has been integrated with the Aegis combat system in various configurations for the different destroyer flights.

For years, the Navy has researched lasers and other directed-energy weapons (such as microwave and particle-beam systems) to advance ship defense against surface craft, aircraft, antiship missiles, and unmanned vehicles. A laser, drawing power from the ship service power system, has an “endless magazine” that Ottaviano says “never runs out of bullets.”

The Navy wants a 60-kilowatt (kW) shipboard solid-state laser that could be increased up to 150 kW. Subsequent increments will ramp up power even further. The Navy’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget request says the system “provides a low cost-per-shot capability” for antisurface warfare; to destroy unmanned aerial systems and fast inshore attack craft; and for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, thanks to its integrated optics.

The development is part of the Navy’s Laser Family of Systems program, which includes two other initiatives: the solid-state laser technology maturation (SSL-TM) program, an Office of Naval Research (ONR) effort, and an optical dazzling interdictor known as ODIN.

More on the SSL-TM program here:

And on submarines:

The Navy Is Arming Attack Submarines With High Energy Lasers

The development is part of the Navy’s Laser Family of Systems program, which includes two other initiatives: the solid-state laser technology maturation (SSL-TM) program, an Office of Naval Research (ONR) effort, and an optical dazzling interdictor known as ODIN.

The U.S. Navy's Virginia Class attack submarines are formidable weapons platforms. They carry advanced-capability (ADCAP) torpedoes and Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles. But apparently this is not enough. They are to be the first subs in the world armed with a powerful laser as well.

Documents suggest that the High Energy Laser (HEL) could be incredibly powerful, around 300 kilowatts. And eventually be up to 500 kilowatts. The power will come from the submarine’s nuclear reactor which has a capacity of 30 megawatts. And there are indications that it may already have been tested using a towed power generator instead.

***It is unclear why the Navy wants to fit a laser to submarines. One of the possible uses will be as a last ditch defense against aircraft such as drones and anti-submarine helicopters.***

Much more Report on Navy Laser, Railgun and Gun-Launched Guided Projectiles

Let's Have "Missile Barges" (and More) Now

A few years ago I noted that someone had proposed missile barges to accompany fleet ships Let's Talk Arsenal Ships and Missile Barges

Perhaps we should call it a self-propelled arsenal barge. SNAFU! has this image of a towed missile barge, the source of which is hard to track, but the caption on the picture indicates this is Russian design using a Sovremennyy-class destroyer as a towing ship*

There is this U.S. Navy image of what appears to be a JHSV pulling what appears to be a high speed missile barge:
:

***
In the meantime, there is this 2005 article by Cmdr. John B. Perkins from the Armed Forces Journal, "Surface ship, submarine missions are coalescing" to ponder:

Andrew F. Krepinevich, director of the U.S. Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), alluded to this trend 10 years ago.

“Just as bombers are becoming relatively less important than the ordnance they carry,” he said, “so too might surface warships, which could evolve to become “barges” (with some perhaps operating below the surface) for advanced conventional munitions that can strike pre-designated targets at extended ranges.”

This concept makes the case that barges would be ideal as strike platforms of the future. The reference to the barges “operating below the surface” is the first precursor toward the idea of larger systems operating underwater.
***
One of Krepinevich’s associates at CSBA put it this way: “This type of basic anti-navy architecture could be made more effective by incorporating increasingly sophisticated mines, active and passive sea-based sensor networks and quiet-attack submarines. Such architectures would have far lower barriers to entry (cost and learning) than carrier battle group operations, potentially enabling those competitors to leapfrog the carrier era and become major maritime competitors, at least in littoral waters. Absent a revolutionary breakthrough in ASW[anti-submarine warfare], naval power-projection operations could be driven sub surface.”
***
This reference brings the point home in stark fashion: Technologies meant to find and destroy objects will become inexpensive and plentiful. The world’s strongest navy should not build anything but ships that employ the best covering tactics available. The CSBA suggested that the capital ship of the fleet in 2020 might be an arsenal ship — a missile-firing submersible armed with cruise and conventional ballistic missiles — and that such ships might be armed with a few hundred to a thousand missiles.

A distributed power projection navy might include several classes of arsenal ships and other submersible power projection forces in the fleet.

Recently, the DoD's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced the concept of a "Sea Train":

The Sea Train vessels independently depart a port under their own power to reach a sortie point notionally 15 [nautical miles, or nmi] from the pier. The four independent vessels then begin the Sea Train mission by assembling in Sea Train configuration and completing a notional 6,500 nmi transit through varied sea state conditions that might require re-routing to optimize travel times or vessel seakeeping. The Sea Train then arrives at a disaggregation point, where the four vessels begin independent yet collaborative operations consisting of transits, loiters, and sprints in varied sea state conditions. The vessels then arrive at a sortie point to begin the aggregation process and conduct a Sea Train sprint from the operational area. The Sea Train then returns to normal transit speed for the remainder of the transit in varied sea state conditions, disaggregates outside of port and the vessels self-navigate to a pier.

There has been research in this area as set out here (pdf) in a paper by Igor Mizine and Gabor Karafiath:

A sea train is an arrangement of multiple hulls connected together to form a longer assembly of vessels. The sea train configuration takes advantage of fundamental hydrodynamic principles to reduce the drag of the assembled train below that of the individual components proceeding separately. In some circumstances the sea train arrangement can also offer operational advantages.

WHAT IF?

What if we develop large numbers of these "sea train" modules, including several loaded with generators, sensors, and "missiles in a box," they can serve as "accompanying assets" to a battle force. Such vessels, arriving in an area of interest could decouple, spread themselves out over a wide area and allow for a very wide distribution of lethality. 

Other "Sea Trains" may be equipped with machine shops, cranes, additive manufacturing equipment, or replenishment munitions or fuel. These units could be held in "safe havens" and brought to the fleet as needed. None of them need be manned which makes them far less expensive to construct. Each could carry sufficient habitability containers to provide comfort for technicians or oother personnel needed to operate equipment at their needed destination. 

 The larger the number of sea train modules, the great the the likelihood of needed components reaching the fleets on a timely basis. With enough units, even the expanse of the Pacific can be "shrunk."

As with WWII merchant shipping, some elements of a sea train could contain self-defense detection and weaponry, remotely monitored, but capable of self protection when authorized by a "human in the loop." Such equipment might include ASW-capable drones, or ASuW assets. 

Further, the use of unmanned but armed surface and subsurface could take the place of manned convoying ships.

COMMUNICATIONS

A key issue in discussing using unmanned vessels in the manner described above is communicating with those vessels to direct their positioning and, in the case of combat. controlling their weaponry. 

Obviously, with the towed missile barge such communications could be done through a cable connection piggy-backing on the tow line. 

With vessels within line of sight of the controller ship, the comms may be done through lasers or line of sight radios.  It is also conceivable that light weight fiber optic lines could connect units even several miles distant.

In certain environments, satellite links may be available. If those are blocked, manned or unmanned aircraft may serve as relay platforms. Indeed, the concept of solar powered high-altitude communications air systems placed to create an continuous link along the projected sea routes is not far-fetched. AeroVironment, among others, has been working along these lines for almost four decades. 

Explained in their video concerning their HAPS project - which could obviously be modified for military use, if needed:

The point is that we currently have the technology to distribute lethality at a much lower cost than the cost of new ships. We just need to get moving on experimenting with these technologies to find the right mix to provide the tools needed by our Navy and Marine Corps. 

*What SNAFU! wrote in 2012 to accompany those images was:

Worried about saturation attacks by anti-ship missiles?  Tow a couple of these behind a Burke loaded with about 1000 plus quad packed SM3's.  Want to savage a coast line?  Fill the other half with about 500 tomahawk land attack missiles.

UPDATE: DARPA "Sea Train" concept image:

DARPA offers up contract bid info here:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Tactical Technology Office (TTO) seeks to enable extended transoceanic transit and long range naval operations by exploiting the efficiencies of a system of connected vessels (Sea Train). The Sea Train will demonstrate long range deployment capabilities for a distributed fleet of tactical Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs).

Gremlins Program Completes First Flight Test for X-61A Vehicle

DARPA reports Gremlins Program Completes First Flight Test for X-61A Vehicle

DARPA's Gremlins program has completed the first flight test of its X-61A vehicle. The

test in late November at the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah included one captive-carry mission aboard a C-130A and an airborne launch and free flight lasting just over an hour-and-a-half.

The goal for this third phase of the Gremlins program is completion of a full-scale technology demonstration series featuring the air recovery of multiple, low-cost, reusable unmanned aerial systems (UASs), or “Gremlins.” Safety, reliability, and affordability are the key objectives for the system, which would launch groups of UASs from multiple types of military aircraft while out of range from adversary defenses. Once Gremlins complete their mission, the transport aircraft would retrieve them in the air and carry them home, where ground crews would prepare them for their next use within 24 hours.

The team met all objectives of the test in November, including gathering data on operation and performance, air and ground-based command and control systems, and flight termination. A parachute anomaly occurred in a recovery sequence that is specific to the test series and not part of the operational plan. The incident resulted in the loss of the test vehicle, one of five in the program. Four vehicles remain operational and available for the test series, which will continue in 2020.

"The vehicle performed well, giving us confidence we are on the right path and can expect success in our follow-on efforts," said Scott Wierzbanowski, the program manager for Gremlins in DARPA's Tactical Technology Office. "We got a closer look at vehicle performance for launch, rate capture, engine start, and transition to free flight. We had simulated the performance on the ground, and have now fully tested them in the air. We also demonstrated a variety of vehicle maneuvers that helped validate our aerodynamic data."

What is the Gremlin Program?


Now do a ship launched version. Perhaps from an unmanned surface vessel or (gasp!) a submersible/semi-submersible.

Modern Science: Cooperative Swarmboats

Back in the day, port and harbor defense units were a cooperative venture between manned surveillance units (Mobile Inshore Undersea Warfare Units or MIUWUs) and manned boats - sometimes Coast Guard Port Security Units (PSUs), sometimes Navy Inshore Boat Units. While the manned boats have proven their worth, they do expose crews to the variety of dangers of both normal operations as well as risks posed by an aggressor.

Now this mission may be assigned to elements of the Naval Maritime Expeditionary Force. In any event, as as been noted here before, the Navy's Office of Naval Research has been pursuing the use of unmanned platforms to take on part of the water work and the capability seems to be getting smarter, as reported by ONI in "Autonomous Swarmboats: New Missions, Safe Harbors":

(Photo by John L. Williams)

Using a unique combination of software, radar and other sensors, officials from the Office of Naval Research (ONR)—together with partners from industry, academia and other government organizations—were able to get a “swarm” of rigid hull inflatable boats (RHIBs) and other small boats to collectively perform patrol missions autonomously, with only remote human supervision, rather than direct human operation, as they performed their missions.

“This demonstration showed some remarkable advances in autonomous capabilities,” said Cmdr. Luis Molina, military deputy for ONR’s Sea Warfare and Weapons Dept. “While previous work had focused on autonomous protection of high-value ships, this time we were focused on harbor approach defense.”

The autonomy technology being developed by ONR is called Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing, or CARACaS. The components that make up CARACaS (some are commercial off-the-shelf) are inexpensive compared to the costs of maintaining manned vessels for some of the dull, dirty or dangerous tasks—all of which can be found in the work of harbor approach defense, experts say.

“The U.S. Navy knows our most important asset, without question, is our highly trained military personnel,” said Dr. Robert Brizzolara, the program officer at ONR who oversees the effort. “The autonomy technology we are developing for our Sailors and Marines is versatile enough that it will assist them in performing many different missions, and it will help keep them safer.”
***
During the demo, unmanned boats were given a large area of open water to patrol. As an unknown vessel entered the area, the group of swarmboats collaboratively determined which patrol boat would quickly approach the unknown vessel, classify it as harmless or suspicious, and communicate with other swarmboats to assist in tracking and trailing the unknown vessel while others continued to patrol the area. During this time, the group of swarmboats provided status updates to a human supervisor.

“This technology allows unmanned Navy ships to overwhelm an adversary,” added Molina. “Its sensors and software enable swarming capability, giving naval warfighters a decisive edge.”

Naval leadership in recent years has emphasized a blended future force, leveraging the synergy of using manned and unmanned systems to complement each other while accomplishing missions. In the near future, unmanned boats can take on some dangerous missions, thereby protecting the warfighter, and they can do that in great numbers at a fraction of the cost of a single manned warship. Furthermore, these small boats are already in the Navy’s inventory (as manned craft) and can quickly and inexpensively be converted to an autonomous boat via the installation of a CARACaS kit.

Smart, safer for crews and not expensive. I would think of several iterations of this technology that would be major force multipliers. See U.S. Navy: Bring Out the Swarmbots!

Nice.

And so 21st Century.

A 2015 article from ONR's Future Force sets it all up The Swarm: Autonomous Boats Take on Navy Missions.

I just don't care about James Fallows: "The Tragedy of the American Military"

CDR Salamander, being younger than I, and a naval officer who came of age in the 1980's has a nice long piece on James Fallows The Tragedy of the American Military at The Tragedies of James Fallows. I commend it to you, if you are of the age where James Fallows was part of your formative past.

My own reaction to the work of Mr. Fallows is as it has long been: I. Just. Don't. Care.

"Opinions," as one of my old warrant mentors used to say, "are like a**holes. Everyone has one." Mr. Fallows has the right, long defended by men better than he, to express his opinions however and wherever he can find either an audience or a publisher.

If his angst over evading the draft in the 1960's continues, that is his problem.

As a child of the same era, I was close to many of those who faced the test of whether to serve if called by their country or partake of their right to reject service as an indication of disagreement with an "immoral" war in Vietnam. Some who rejected the call to service went honorably to jail for their beliefs, in the finest traditions and logical consequence of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience and rejected being "tools of the state":

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others- as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders- serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few- as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men- serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

Whatever. After name-calling his fellow citizens (a title he seems to have rejected), at least Thoreau went to jail for his beliefs. After all, he famously spent one night in jail for refusing to pay the "poll tax." I expected the students of Harvard in my day to be willing to go to jail for much weightier matters - such as the right of the state to commit them to involuntary servitude in a time of war that the students believed to be unjust. But no, they took a lesser path, these "Fallows travelers" and sought refuge in phony medical excuses or claims of deviant behavior of the sort which nowadays would not even forbid them from enlisting or being commissioned.

If Mr. Fallows wants to spin his tale and opine, let him first find the grave of the man who went in his place and apologize to him. Let him explain to the dead why his value to society is so much higher than theirs.

If you ask, "Who am I to judge him?" My answer if that I volunteered my services. No draftee took my place.

If I found the Vietnam war immoral, it was in the way it was entered into and managed by the civilian leadership, not by the military leaders who, with a sense of duty that seems to elude Mr. Fallows, followed the Constitution as they understood it. Should they have resigned rather than go forward with plans with which they disagreed ? Maybe. You could write a book about that.

You want to critique moral delinquency? You might look at the way the Democrat dominated Congress abandoned our South Vietnamese allies after 1972, you could take excursion into trying to figure out the needless deaths caused by cutting off funding. Moral high ground? From a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter? Don't make me laugh.

After Vietnam, I stayed on active duty and in the reserves and was a witness to the vast improvements in the military that came after the draft ended and in the increasing professionalism of the armed services - in great part as a result of lessons learned from Vietnam.
If you want it in a nutshell, there is almost no comparison between today's services and the one I joined long ago and which Mr. Fallows evaded.

One of those improvements involves the motivation of the people serving. Coupled with that is not having to spend a vast amount of time keeping an eye on draftees who really don't want to be in the service and lack the skills that make them useful for much other that painting rocks white and picking up cigarette butts.

Mr. Fallows understanding of the history of civil-military relations in the U.S. is limited, as others have already pointed out. He leaves out Civil War draft riots, rich kids paying others to take their place in the Union Army and much more. If he had a better understanding of history perhaps he would not have used WWII as his focus of the "good old days" when every household had a Soldier, Sailor, Marine or defense worker in it. Instead, he says

"Let’s skip to today’s Iraq-Afghanistan era, in which everyone “supports” the troops but few know very much about them."

And he says, this means the "public"suffers because its art forms, movies and television are so weak that it fails the citizenry because

". . . they lack the comfortable closeness with the military that would allow them to question its competence as they would any other institution’s."

What? Give me an 'effing break. Over the last 13 years, we've had embeds up the yingyang, brilliant first hand reports from the troops, milblogs, etc, etc. Hell, Sebastian Junger's Restrepo and Korengal ought to be required watching for Congress and any administration who want to get a look at our current wars and the small wars of the future. If you don't feel close to the military, you aren't trying.

You want to know veterans? Get out of the ivory tower and go meet them where they are now working. Write something challenging the lies that proclaim every vet suffers from PTSD and is a loose cannon unsafe to be around - you be surprised how many vets will come forward to talk to you about the harm the media has done to them and how normal their lives are. Why, some of them even have wives and kids and dreams.

If you feel the tokens of respect shown to the military and veterans at football games is "over the top" then come tell us about your feelings toward those you attacked ROTC students in the 1960s or assaulted troops returning from doing their duty in Vietnam. Should we honor those who bombed ROTC buildings at halftime? How about a Bill Ayers/Bernardine Dohrn halftime show?. We could have the bands play suitable music, like The Internationale:

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we’ll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They’ll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We’ll shoot the generals on our own side.

Everyone can sing along!

Suck it up Mr. Fallows, it does not affect you what tributes are given to our troops except as it batters at the door of your self-respect. Besides, this too shall pass, as it always has. Until we need the military again.

If you feel the sons and daughters of the "upper crust" (apparently as being graduates of Ivy League universities) are not serving as they should, I would suggest the answer is not conscription, but a little dose of patriotism injected into their schooling. Not as in "my country right or wrong" but as in "my country, my duty." And maybe that duty is to be a "dissenter" who is willing to pay a price and not run away.

You want to question "competence?" Look no further than the editors at Atlantic who let this stuff find its way into print.

Somehow, the irony of a "chickenshit" draft evader pointing accusing fingers at "chickenhawks" has lost its humor for me. Instead, I come back to my original vibe toward Mr. Fallows: "I. Just. Don't. Care."

Small Wars: Max Boot on the Future Wars of Insurgencies

Foreign Affairs has Max Boot on More Small Wars: Counterinsurgency Is Here to Stay
:

If only a nation as powerful and vulnerable as the United States had the option of defining exactly which types of wars it wages. Reality, alas, seldom cooperates. Over the centuries, U.S. presidents of all political persuasions have found it necessary to send troops to fight adversaries ranging from the Barbary pirates to Filipino insurrectos to Haitian cacos to Vietnamese communists to Somali warlords to Serbian death squads to Taliban guerrillas to al Qaeda terrorists. Unlike traditional armies, these enemies seldom met U.S. forces in the open, which meant that they could not be defeated quickly. To beat such shadowy foes, American troops had to undertake the time-intensive, difficult work of what’s now known as counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and nation building.

Video discussion:



We did touch on this during our discussion with John Nagl on Midrats:

Check Out Military Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Midrats on BlogTalkRadio

Or download the show from iTunes. It's all free. Except for that value of time thing.

UPDATE: No spell check for post headlines or why do I catch them only after the post is up?