Watch the US Navy Test Its Seaborne Death Lasers
This video shows the US Navy carrying out a test of a new ship-based Laser Weapon System (LaWS) in the Persian Gulf. The seaborne death lasers consist of a 30-kilowatt prototype system, mounted on the USS Ponce transport ship.
The operational demo is meant to see how LaWS would perform at sea in battle. The US military has already experimented with chemical lasers like the Air Force's canceled Airborne Laser, but these were too expensive and impractical.
The new lasers are smaller and run on electricity. Better yet, they cost only about $1 per shot.
However, so far, they could not garner enough power to destroy a target. To fix this issue, the LaWS system brings together six commercial welding lasers whose beams converge on a single target.
"LaWS can be directed onto targets from the radar track obtained from a MK 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon system or other targeting source," further says the video's description.
More recently, it was revealed that the US Navy was seeking $300 million for research into a family of laser weapons for the fleet. Who knows what other lasers we might be seeing soon.