Lasers will save us all. If they ever work.

Galrahn’s assertion this past week on Information Dissemination—“Is That Fleet Worth Buying?”—is mostly a demand for more, smaller ships. But one of his essential claims—

     There are no technological changes in warfare that have fundamentally altered naval warfare since World War II, when war of the sea was primarily and decisively won by naval forces that attacked from over and under the sea. If anything, the advancement of technologies like nuclear power for submarines combined with the improved range and precision of guided weapons have increased the capabilities of both submarines and aircraft in naval warfare. 

—can also be read as a lamest upon the survivability of surface combatants. The economics of fighting missiles-ashore with missiles-at-sea are bad, simply because the coastal launchers are hard to find. For the US Navy in the western Pacific, it would seem that there are three options, though the first is the only one getting real attention:

1. Invest in big air defense ships with lots of ammunition. This has clearly the US approach since replacing its battleship-building program in 1942 with large orders for anti-aircraft cruisers.
2. Invest in stealthy ships. I will call the Swedish approach, undertaken because (as the line goes) 'invisibility is easier than invincibility’. It happens to be difficult to achieve while emitting lots of radar energy looking for those enemy aircraft and missiles.
3. Lasers. Those will save us all. If they ever work.

Before we just get deeply spooked by that Dong-Feng 21D thing, throw in the towel on fleet air defense, and build a vast flotilla of Visbys, we ought to at least talk over option (3). After consulting with my laser geek friends and reading a few briefings and papers about laser weapons, my quick assessment of the idea, and its marketing thesis. (If anyone more knowledgeable has an opposing view, please comment.) Adoption of laser weapons is limited by two problems—one technical, and another purely a matter of marketing.

The technical problem is understandable. Lasers today seem in the same category as rail guns. As a recent CRS report on the subject put it, "in spite of decades of development work, these skeptics might note, DoD has not deployed an operational high-energy laser weapon system." It's possible that the technology's development possibilities are akin to those of unmanned aircraft; we all know the drone story from the Vietnam War and the Beka'a Valley campaign, but the operational possibilities didn't really take off until the early 1990s. On the other hand, we could have another case of nuclear fusion on our hands. At least it’s not cold fusion.

Anyway, in the next few years, the strongest technical promise of operational relevance seems to be from fiber or solid state lasers with power outputs of up to 100 kW. Today's ships can't generate a lot more excess power than that, and the underlying technology doesn't support much more anyway. That sort of power can destroy subsonic aircraft and missiles at relatively short ranges, but wouldn't provide the ability to defend other ships. The cooling capacity would require more room, the actual mount would probably fit into something the size of Goalkeeper gun. Thus, a 100 kW laser could substitute for another close-in weapon. It would come with an effectively unlimited magazine, but one can load out big ships with lots of ammunition, even if they don’t today.

Where that unlimited magazine, as a concept, would be great is in countering saturating missile attacks. The problem is that engaging supersonic weapons, necessarily at longer ranges, would require megawatt power levels. Those would be hard to coax out of anything but a new design for a surface combatant, and more to the point, the technology just isn't there. Worse, the best prospect for those energy levels today seems to be chemical lasers, which require recharge with quite toxic stuff. That's not good for underway replenishment, or even just shipboard storage.

Thus, it's hard for me to see the advantage here, given the technological possibilities today. Magazine capacity for naval vessels is one constraint, but another issue in saturation attacks by sea-skimming missiles is getting the gun and missile batteries to engage successfully all the incoming weapons. VLS cells fire in rapid succession, and multiple missiles fly at different targets while the launchers are still volleying. Guns and lasers, though, must dwell on targets, so even if they are completely accurate, a small number of either only destroy so many missiles before something impacts. Consequently, if I just replace the Phalanx or the Goalkeeper with a laser, what am I gaining?

Then there is the marketing problem. As an internal study at Northrop Grumman noted, this technology suffers from the giggle factor. Everyone in a position to make a decision about actual deployment knows about those decades of unsuccessful development work, so even an apparent breakthrough would be regarded skeptically.

So what to do? I heard a talk some months ago by the Israeli ambassador, and noted his enthusiasm for Iron Dome—the first missile defense system that actually worked in combat, he said. While I’ve heard people at Rafael dispute this point, I think that he's forgetting the Patriot 3 in 2003. Even so, the size of the success was striking. Patriot was 7-for-7, with two own-goals. Iron Dome destroyed something like 400 incoming rounds, at a rate of about 87 percent, and with no fratricide. This has a lot of people buzzing about what else is possible in missile defense.

I do note that several Israeli companies are busy in the laser business; Israel Defense magazine had a story about that last year. Those Iron Dome missiles cost about $90,000 each, and Hamas' rockets cost about $800, but the laser shots would cost literally less than $1. I have previously argued that the economics of that problem may actually favor the Israelis. All the same, the numbers at least look stark, and will probably attract sympathetic attention. A land-based installation would also be easier to demonstrate, as it wouldn't require cutting and welding on an existing warship. One would just need a spare hilltop outside Beersheba.

So here's my marketing thesis. I would hope that anyone wanting to demonstrate a laser weapon push the idea with Israeli Ministry of Defense, for the opportunity for a combat debut in any future round of rocket attacks on Israel. That country offers the next likely opportunity for a successful showcasing, and even in the areas where it may not lead technologically, its companies have ventures with Boeing, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman. If such a weapon worked repeatedly, it would attract attention in two ways. Armies and navies would see its immediate possibilities for defense against anything down to large-caliber shells, and navies in particular would start thinking more seriously about the possibilities for scaling up. Even if the prospects were poor, the allure could draw more developmental funding.