Lasers? Railguns? Sorry, too broke.

[Grey Fox]

What the fuck?  Did we really need a picture of a shell game at 1944x2592 pixels?

The key to reinforcing your posts with an image is to use appropriately-sized photos.

In the mean time can you edit the tag to 640x480?

[DGuller]

Scientists who go rogue have short lives.  See: Gerald Bull

I tried to see him, but I was told he was dead.  Do you know of anyone else I could see who might be, um, useful?

[Razgovory]

Scientists who go rogue have short lives.  See: Gerald Bull

I tried to see him, but I was told he was dead.  Do you know of anyone else I could see who might be, um, useful?

Mordechai Vanunu.  Though it is difficult to see him or talk to him since he's under 24 hour surveillance.  I don't think he can use a phone or anything like that.

[Josquius]

Shame for most of us, it would be nice to have the US throw millions at research that could potentially have useful applications.
Makes sense for the US though.

[KRonn]

Shipboard power is the question mark surrounding both weapons. The laser and the rail gun require diverting power from a ship's generators in order to fire. The Navy's waved that away, saying that its onboard generators — especially the superpowerful ones in development — can handle the megawattage necessary, and the Free Electron Laser's guts are shaped like a racetrack to "recycle" some of the energy injected into it. But both plans rely on the power efficiency of ships that aren't built yet.

The Pentagon will probably pick this back up again, when finances are better, and/or it's decided to build the new class of ships which can handle the power generators for the lasers. So right now they seem to have the lasers and/or rail guns a lot closer to production but don't have the ships that can use them.

[grumbler]

Shipboard power is the question mark surrounding both weapons. The laser and the rail gun require diverting power from a ship's generators in order to fire. The Navy's waved that away, saying that its onboard generators — especially the superpowerful ones in development — can handle the megawattage necessary, and the Free Electron Laser's guts are shaped like a racetrack to "recycle" some of the energy injected into it. But both plans rely on the power efficiency of ships that aren't built yet.

The Pentagon will probably pick this back up again, when finances are better, and/or it's decided to build the new class of ships which can handle the power generators for the lasers. So right now they seem to have the lasers and/or rail guns a lot closer to production but don't have the ships that can use them.

The argument that the ships "aren't built yet" is, of course, absurd.  You don't start designing the weapons for a ship after it is built.

The article should say (and would say, had the writer been doing his/her job and not just been copying someone else) that the weapons would require that the new electrical generation systems be much more efficient and/or reliable and/or inexpensive than research currently projects them to be.  I am not sure whether this research will be picked up in the future unless there are some breakthroughs in generation.

They will certainly continue basic R&D with these systems, just not transition them to weapons development status.

[The Minsky Moment]

A nuclear reactor should be able to provide enough power, no?

Of course, that would require developing whole new classes of nuclear-powered surface vessels . . .

[grumbler]

A nuclear reactor should be able to provide enough power, no?

Of course, that would require developing whole new classes of nuclear-powered surface vessels . . .

A reactor can provide a lot of sustained power, but not enough instantaneous power.  You'd need to store the power.  I know there has been some talk of some kind of flywheel system to do that, because there has been talk of maybe needing two such systems to avoid Coriolis effect, but I don't know if that's just geek speculation or a real concern.  All I know is that reactors are better for things like propulsion than things like powering lasers.  Reactors take time to build up for greater power demands.

A new ship and reactor design wouldn't be a big hurdle - naval reactors has made steady progress while researching for improved submarine reactors.

[DGuller]

What happens to all that nuclear shit when the enemy shoots at it?

[grumbler]

What happens to all that nuclear shit when the enemy shoots at it?

Depends on whether they hit it or not.   

A breach of the primary coolant system would cause contamination, and if the enemy knocked out both loops in the primary or secondary coolant systems, the ship would lose power except for the emergency backups.  The reactor cannot explode or anything.

[jimmy olsen]

Neither comes cheap, either. The Navy's spent some $211 million since 2005 developing the rail gun. Its milestones with the Free Electron Laser — in development in some form since the '90s — led it to ask Congress for $60 million in annual directed-energy research funds, most of which go to the superlaser. Needless to say, a Senate panel facing a huge budget crunch was unsympathetic.

The Office of Naval Research didn't respond by press time. The process of passing a defense budget making it through no fewer than four committees and two floor votes, so it's not like these programs cease to exist. But unless the Navy makes a big push for its futuristic weapons, both of them will die on the drawing board.

Neither comes cheap? This author is a fucking moron, that's cheap as hell for the navy.  The Navy can easily shift enough money around to continue paying for this research and it will. That's if they don't manage to lobby it back into the official budget, which I'm fairly sure they will.

[11B4V]

What the fuck?  Did we really need a picture of a shell game at 1944x2592 pixels?

The key to reinforcing your posts with an image is to use appropriately-sized photos.

I wanted to make sure you could see the brothers "twists"

[Monoriu]

If you want to reduce your budget deficits, something will have to give way. 

[CountDeMoney]

the Office of Naval Research, the mad scientists of the Navy

Classy, Mr. Reporter.  Classy.

[Admiral Yi]

I want to know why the super-efficient and competent private sector isn't picking up the slack.

Because there's no private market for rail guns.