Power And Energy Storage Requirements For Ship Integration Of Solid-State Lasers On Naval Platforms

LT Joshua H Valiani, USN

The United States Navy’s interest in high-energy lasers (HELs) dictates the need for further study into the propagation of laser light through different atmospheric conditions. Due to the amount of energy required to power these laser weapons systems and the limited amount of available energy onboard ships, different energy storage systems need to be explored. For this research, two locations were studied: the coast of Cuba and the coast of Russia. These two locations were studied during moderate winter conditions for varying laser output power: 150 kW, 500 kW, and 1 MW. The laser performance code ANCHOR was used to estimate the number of successful HEL engagements that can proceed against a certain target using various configurations of energy storage as the laser output power is varied..