A big friggin’ laser:
Ackerman throws cold water:
The Navy won’t say just how many kilowatts of energy the LaWS’ beam is, but it’s probably under the 100 kilowatts generally considered militarily mature. The fact that LaWS can kill a surveillance drone and a fast-attack boat has more to do with the vulnerabilities of those systems than it its own prowess. It cannot stop an anti-ship missile, and its beam, about the circumference of a dime, will do little more than singe a fighter jet. And there remain significant challenges with cooling a shipboard high-energy laser, a necessary safety feature.
But [Adm. Jonathan] Greenert, [Rear Adm. Thomas] Eccles, and [Rear Adm. Matthew] Klunder are confident that the next wave of Navy lasers will be more powerful.
One advantage of the new weapon is that it’s cheap to fire:
Since it runs on electricity, it can fire as long as there is power at a cost of less than $1 dollar per shot.
The Dish 