The U.S. Navy wants to deploy its first laser on a ship later this year and it plans to test an electromagnetic rail gun prototype aboard a vessel within two years.Lasers which designed to shoot down aerial drones and electric guns that fire projectiles at hypersonic speeds like "Star Wars" movie series .
Program manager for directed energy and electric weapon systems for the Naval Sea Systems Command, Capt. Mike Ziv said "It fundamentally changes the way we fight,"
The solid-state Laser Weapon System is designed to hit out "asymmetrical threats," such as aerial drones, speed boats and swarm boats etc.
The Navy also plans to test a newly designed electromagnetic rail gun prototype aboard a ship within two years.
Rail guns which have a ability to fire a projectile at six or seven times the speed of sound and cause damage.
Defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, Loren Thompson said "Lasers may lose their targets if it's raining, dusty, or if there's turbulence in the atmosphere, and the rail gun requires vast amount of electricity to launch the projectile."
The Navy's new destroyer, the Zumwalt, is the only ship which has enough electric power to run a rail gun and its gas turbine-powered generators can produce 78 megawatts of power.
The laser beam is invisible to the human eye and operates on 30 kilowatts of electricity."You see the effect on what you are targeting but you don't see the actual beam," Ziv said.
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