but those are still meant for flimsy aerial targets, not an armored laser turret within a heavily protected compound.
Wait, what? The comment I replied to insinuated that a mobile 50KW system wasn’t possible so I linked you to one that the US already has. You then linked me to the Skyranger which has a LESS powerful laser than DE M-SHORAD and brought up “armored laser turrets within a heavily protected compound.”
I am now confused as to your point.
You don’t have to spam a stupid amount of individual bullets.
You would against a drone swarm, especially if each drone is more than a meter or two away from the next one.
I will say that my memory was bad and so my cost was wrong. A CWIZ has a rate of fire of about 3,000 rounds a minute with each round costing something like $30. So the firing cost per minute is $90,000!
Back to your point; engaging a single target will use about 100 rounds for a cost of $3,000. So if for a modest swarm of 10 drones dispersed such that each has to be targeted individually the total cost would be around $30,000. Contrast that with a HEL system where the total cost would be around $50.
Even if you could upgrade the CWIZ to “one shot one kill” levels of accuracy it would still cost $30 per drone so our little swarm would cost $300 to deal with.
I love the CWIZ but the economics are entirely in favor of HEL systems.
That’s one I hadn’t seen before. Got any more info?
Yes programmable munitions may currently be able to do the job more reliably, especially in adverse weather conditions, but they’re also vastly more expensive. The cheapest option is a CWIZ but even that thing costs something like $40,000 a minute to fire and using missiles can cost up to $1,000,000 each or more. The laser costs maybe $5 each time you fire it.
Economically its a no brainer to use a laser system when possible.
Having such lasers stationary is one thing, but having them mobile another.
The US already has them. They’re called DE M-SHORAD and they’re mounted on Strykers.
The US already has a variety of HEL systems. The Navy has them, the Army has a Stryker brigade with them along with systems to go in the bed of a pickup truck and one that mounts on a side by side.
Former Prez of Italy?
I’d honestly rather have them shooting at US Navy ships than commercial shipping vessels. The USN can protect itself and is at least a somewhat valid target, random commercial vessels can’t protect themselves and aren’t legitimate targets.
This isn’t happening in Somalia.
Reads like the plot of a Tom Clancy novel.
I agree with you. The F-16’s primary value to Ukraine will be as a fully NATO integrated missile truck.
A dogfight or three will inevitably occur but they’ll be a “Wrong Place / Wrong Time” happenstance rather than designated Air Combat scenarios.
That’s basically what’s happening. I don’t know if they used inflatable motorboats specifically, Ukraine has used JetSki’s previously, but what they’re doing is packing shaped explosive charges onto small watercraft, running the craft up against the hull of the ship and then blowing it up. If you rewatch the video you can see that multiple attacking craft were used and at least two of them targeted and damaged the same area of the hull!
Those little boats pack a MEAN punch and as you can see in the video they are damn hard to hit with projectile weapons. The Russian crew was obviously shooting like crazy but they weren’t able to stop the attack.
Al-Qaeda famously did this to the American Naval Vessel USS Cole back in 2000. The USS Cole didn’t sink thanks to the efforts of its bad ass damage control team but the ship was seriously damaged and it took a year to rebuild her.