The US navy is going to sea for the first time with a laser attack weapon that has been shown in tests to disable patrol boats and blind or destroy surveillance drones.
A prototype shipboard laser will be deployed on a converted amphibious transport and docking ship in the Persian Gulf, where Iranian fast-attack boats have harassed US warships and where the government in Tehran is building remotely piloted aircraft carrying surveillance pods and, some day potentially, rockets.
The laser will not be operational until next year, but the announcement last night by Admiral Jonathan W Greenert, the chief of naval operations, seemed meant as a warning to Iran not to step up activity in the gulf in the next few months if tensions increase because of sanctions and the impasse in negotiations over the Iranian nuclear programme.
Rear Admiral Matthew L Klunder: This will indeed be the first, real world deployment of a directed energy weapon. If we have to provide some type of weapon system against a small, fast boat or UAV, this would be the system. We can actually dazzle that sensor and degrade it completely. We can actually almost turn it off. When we shoot one pulse of directed energy, of laser energy, it's about one dollar. It's actually a little less than a U.S. dollar compared to something that right now make take thousands of dollars, maybe even millions of dollars. Think of that for a second.
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