Center for International Maritime Security

Many times I have noted there are few think tanks in the United States who are dedicated to maritime studies from a public consumption perspective. It would appear a few young Navy officers are doing something about that.

The Center for International Maritime Security is a non-profit, non-partisan think tank. It was formed in 2012 to bring together forward-thinkers from a variety of fields to examine the capabilities, threats, hotspots, and opportunities for security in the maritime domain. Check out the NextWar blog to join the discussion. We encourage a diversity of views.

The views expressed on this website are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the official viewpoints or policies of the contributor’s employers, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Interesting, I think. One to watch and added to the blogroll.

Foreign Entanglements: Potpourri

Charli Carpenter and I work through a bit of the logic of the Seapower in Culture series: We also talk a bit about the latest issue of Foreign Policy and this season of Game of Thrones, for anyone who'd be interested. I anticipate the release of Battleship with considerable dread, although I hope that it'll generate some good conversation here.

Forbes and Rigell Take on Sequestration

Representatives Randy Forbes and Scott Rigell are hosting a forum in Chesapeake VA on Tuesday evening, May 14 to discuss the dangers to national security associated with sequestration.  I've taken the liberty of cutting and pasting from the invitation website below:  RSVP at the link:

JOIN CONGRESSMAN RANDY FORBES and CONGRESSMAN SCOTT RIGELL

ON MONDAY
MAY 14
6:30 p.m. (doors open at 5:30 p.m.)

CHESAPEAKE CONFERENCE CENTER

This town hall-style forum will include brief information from a Congressional delegation. A moderated “open mic” will allow participants to
• SHARE YOUR STORIES
• VOICE YOUR OPINIONS
• ASK HOW DEFENSE CUTS WILL IMPACT YOU

Concerned citizens, military retirees, veterans, small business owners, defense contractors, and local Chambers of Commerce are invited to attend.

Download the invitation here. 

The Defending our Defenders LISTENING SESSION seeks to allow citizen input about the danger defense budget cuts present to national security, our men and women in uniform and local economies nationwide. More information is available at
www.forbes.house.gov

Directed Energy and Electric Weapons Systems (DEEWS Serial 2)

This is the second in my series of posts devoted to DEEWS.

Though often confused and intermingled in the press and literature, Directed Energy (DE) weapons and Electric Weapons are not one and the same.  As an example, there are electrically powered lasers and there are lasers which depend on the chemical combustion of liquid fuels for lasing.  Likewise, not all directed energy weapons are lasers.  High Power Microwave (HPM) and Millimeter Wave (MMW) devices (unlike lasers) operate in the non-optical portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.  And finally, not all electric weapons are directed energy weapons.  Electromagnetic Rail-guns (EMRG’s), Electromagnetic Coil Accelerators (ECA’s), and Linear Electric Motor Accelerators (LEMA’s), though all electrically driven are not in the true sense, directed energy weapons as they accelerate mass and utilize kinetic energy as their lethal mechanism.

With respect to lasers, there are three broad categories currently under development:  chemical, solid state, and free electron.

Chemical Lasers

Chemical lasers are capable of achieving continuous wave output in the multi-megawatt range. Examples of chemical lasers include chemical oxygen iodine lasers (COIL), hydrogen fluoride (HF) lasers, and deuterium fluoride (DF) lasers. The COIL laser used in the Air Force’s now-cancelled Airborne Laser (YAL-1A) was fed gaseous chlorine, molecular iodine, and a liquid mixture of hydrogen peroxide and potassium hydroxide. Even though the laser operates at relatively low gas pressures, the gas flow is near the speed of sound at the reaction time. The fast flow facilitates heat removal from the lasing medium in contrast with high-power solid-state lasers. The principal reaction products include potassium salt, water, and oxygen.

Solid State Slab Lasers

Diode-pumped solid-state (DPSS) lasers operate by using a laser diode to “pump” a solid medium (for example, a ruby or a neodymium-doped crystal).  High-power lasers use many laser diodes, arranged in strips. This diode grid can be imaged onto the crystal by means of a lens. Higher brightness (leading to better beam profile and longer diode lifetime) is achieved by optically removing the dark areas between the diodes, which are needed for cooling and delivering the current.  Combining the outputs of multiple slabs is the primary means of achieving higher energy levels.

Solid State Fiber Lasers

The beams from multiple diodes can also be combined by coupling each diode into an optical fiber, which is placed precisely over the diode.  At the other end of the fiber bundle, the fibers are fused together to form a uniform beam.   Combining the outputs of many fiber lasers (100’s to 10,000’s) is one means of achieving high energy levels

Free-Electron Lasers

Free-electron lasers (FELs) are unique as they don’t use molecular or atomic states for the lasing medium. FELs employ a relativistic electron beam (e-beam) as the lasing medium.  The e-beam is generated in an electron accelerator and then injected into a periodic, transverse magnetic field (undulator). An amplified electromagnetic output wave is created by synchronizing the e-beam and electromagnetic field wavelengths.  The wavelength of the output is determined by the e-beam energy and the periodicity of the transverse magnetic field in the undulator.  FELs can thus be designed to a wider range of frequencies/wavelengths than other laser types.

Non-laser  RF based DEEWS include the following technologies:

Millimeter Wave

Unlike lasers that have yet to be fielded operationally as weapons, micro-wave (MW) based systems have achieved advanced prototype levels of maturity and have been deployed.  MW devices (of which millimeter-wave (MMW) are a subset) operate in the non-optical range of the electromagnetic spectrum just beyond the Far-IR.  Because of this, they are much less susceptible to attenuation due to aerosol and particulate matter in the atmosphere, which plague optical systems such as lasers.  Below a wavelength of one centimeter though there can be considerable absorption of their energy by water molecules (in particular at 0.1, 0.2, and 0.5 centimeters) and this can significantly affect their range when operating at these wavelengths.  Millimeter-wave technology has been developed by the Air Force for this very reason.  The Active Denial System (ADS) takes advantage of the transmission window between two and five millimeters and transmits high-frequency waves at 95 GHz (a wavelength of 3.2 mm). Much as a microwave oven heats food, the millimeter waves excite water and fat molecules in the body, instantly heating them and causing intense pain.  While higher frequency microwaves would penetrate human tissue and cause considerable tissue damage, the millimeter waves used in ADS are blocked by cell density and in general only penetrate the top layers of skin.  This system was made available for use in Iraq for personnel control at prisons but has not yet been employed due to public perception concerns over its use. Aside from the specific frequency of operation, an ADS system is very similar in physical design, construction, and operation to the wide range of radar systems currently employed on naval vessels.  Incorporation of ADS on surface vessels could provide significant capability in preventing adversaries from approaching within several hundred meters.  While the actual effective range of the current ADS is classified, basic physics allows us to determine that with sufficient power available and a properly designed aperture, the effective range could be considerably extended.

Microwave

Although the application of laser technology for lethal effects has steadily advanced, the employment of High Powered Microwaves (HPM) for soft or hard kill has developed less evenly. In general HPM refers to a specific range of radar frequencies that can be used to couple large amounts of electromagnetic energy to conductive objects at a distance.  Analogous to the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) effect caused by the high altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon, a HPM weapon generates and transmits a focused microwave beam of sufficient energy to couple electromagnetic energy to distant electrical and or electronic devices.  Depending on the range and energy level of the HPM weapon, the energy can be sufficient to temporarily disrupt or even destroy the target devices.  In 2005, the Navy fielded a HPM system specifically designed to counter Improvised Explosive Devises (IEDs). The system was named “Neutralizing IEDs with RF” (NIRF) and consisted of a HPM source, control system, and aperture mounted within and on a Buffalo Armored vehicle.  The system worked by sweeping a HPM beam along the path in front of the vehicle which could couple enough energy into the fuse of IEDs to cause them to detonate. HPM weapons can also be designed as single use devices consisting of an explosively driven electromagnetic flux compressor and an antenna (feed horn).  These can then be used in bombs or artillery shells for generating localized EMP effects.  Tactical issues facing HPM weapons arise from the difficulty in finding a frequency that can be adequately focused to retain sufficient energy flux density at range to cause damage while also being able to electromagnetically couple to the electronic devices being targeted.  Use of HPM devices aboard naval vessels to confuse or destroy the electronics in cruise missiles or the fusing devices of other weapons has several advantages.  Ships have large amounts of power available to generate the HPMs and sufficient space for the very large apertures necessary to focus their beams.  

The final category of DEEWS use electromagnetic forces to impart kinetic energy to a projectile:

  

Electromagnetic Launch

Though it received high levels of funding in the late 1980’s, research into weapons applications for the full spectrum of electromagnetic launchers dropped to a fairly low level following the demise of the Soviet Union.  The U.S. Navy decision to pursue hybrid and all electric ship topologies in the DDG-1000 and other classes of future combatants triggered the recent resurgence in work.  Though not technically a weapon, the progress made in the development of the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), to be installed in CVN-78, has also benefited rail-gun development as much of the technology in the ancillary components is very similar.  After tests on a proof of concept system, the Office of Naval Research has begun testing to evaluate the barrel life and structural integrity of prototype systems separately designed by BAE Systems and General Atomics.  In the near term, the U.S. Navy aims to develop a 20-32 megajoule (MJ) weapon with a range of 80-160 km.  In contrast, conventional five-inch naval guns have a range of about 25 km.  On future all-electric combatants and or modified versions of existing cruisers and destroyers, these guns would eliminate the need for the powder magazines associated with conventional gun systems.  With an EM launcher there is no propellant charge required and the projectiles, though perhaps containing small fragment dispense charges, would be essentially inert.

That pretty much covers the main technologies in the DEEWS space.  As we go forward in this series, a number of questions will arise about technical maturity, operational use cases, cost/schedule and the like.  We will not cover everything, but we will cover a lot of ground.  As we linked in the first of the series, when ONR’s main guy on Directed Energy starts talking about fielding using numbers of years able to be counted on one hand, good things are happening. 

Bryan McGrath

Directed Energy and Electric Weapons Systems (Serial 1)

Nearly a year and a half ago, my colleague Tim Walton and I submitted a study proposal to DoD’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA) entitled “The Operational and Strategic Implications of Electric and Directed Energy Weapons for Naval Warfare”.  The study was not funded, but we put a lot of work into the proposal, and it occurred to me recently that 1) it would be a shame to do all that thinking and not have it reach a broader audience than the ONA evaluation committee and 2) that this blog would be a useful venue for raising and discussing some of the many important issues involved in the development and acquisition of Directed Energy and Electric Weapon Systems (DEEWS).  Additionally, since we submitted the study idea to ONA, we have seen the Navy’s Office of Naval Research release a “Solid State Laser Technical Maturation Program” RFI, CSBA has released a very informative report, and very recently, ONR’s Directed Energy lead predicted in the open press that laser weapons would be at sea in approximately four years.  The time is right for a discussion of the prospects and future of directed energy, and so over the course of the next year, I will post occasional (likely monthly) pieces related to the subject of DEEWS and naval warfare. 

The rapid advancement of DEEWS technology over the last few decades, both in the United States and abroad, hints at a shift in the calculus of warfare similar to that which occurred in the interwar period in the early part of the 20^th century.  Armored Warfare, Close Air Support, Carrier Strike Warfare, and Submarine Warfare were all enabled by technological advances, but in each case, the countries that made the greatest strides in these new types of warfare were not the originators of the technological advances on which they were based.

DEEWS such as lasers and rail-guns operate on different physical principals than their gunpowder and high explosive based predecessors.  With unprecedented speed of engagement and nearly surgical lethal effects, they offer potentially revolutionary methods of conducting warfare at sea.  However, military powers that have enjoyed extended periods of preeminence are often prone to forcing new warfighting capabilities into their existing ways of doing business and missing out on their true potential.  It is historically the less mature or less bureaucratic militaries that are the best able to maximize the impact of novel capabilities by forming new organizations and tactics around them.  With several other countries actively pursuing DEEWS technology, the U.S. military may be at risk of suffering technological surprise from the very technologies it originally developed. 

Put another way, I fear that sunk costs associated with current weapons and ways of thinking, bureaucratic inflexibility, and an inability to institutionally embrace disruptive change could stand in the way of the development and fielding of these highly promising technologies.  This series seeks to add to the ongoing discussion in the Pentagon and to raise awareness within the community of navalists as to the future promise and current reality of DEEWS.   

I invite your views and comments as this series matures.  I am not a DEEWS expert, so if I get something wrong or incomplete, call me on it.  I have asked a few friends of mine who are smarter on these systems than I am to look in on the dialogue and offer up illuminating thoughts and comments as their time permits. 

Bryan McGrath