Will Boeing Make Warships’ Laser Weapons More Accurate?

Boeing has been awarded a $29.5 million contract to design and develop a beam control system that could provide exceptional accuracy for laser weapons on U.S. Navy warships.

The company will begin to design a prototype High Power Beam Control Subsystem (HP BCSS) that’s compatible with High Energy Lasers (HEL) based on solid-state laser (SSL) technology.

Boeing’s solution will be compatible with systems other companies are designing for the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) Solid State Laser Technology Maturation (SSL-TM) program.

The resulting beam control system will focus and hold a laser on a moving aimpoint long enough to disable the target. Doing that with a ship-based laser is particularly challenging, given the maritime environment and constant movement of an at-sea vessel.

Peggy Morse, vice president, Boeing Directed Energy & Strategic Systems (DESS), said:

Boeing innovations in beam control and directed energy technologies are keys to understanding laser weapon system configurations that could yield a capability for the Navy in their maritime environment.

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Image: US Navy