4 ms·

seriously? It's 2021. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but it shouldn't be hard to track and aim a 30cm object at 100 m with a laser that is moving +/- 5-

seriously? It's 2021. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but it shouldn't be hard to track and aim a 30cm object at 100 m with a laser that is moving +/- 5-10 meters at a speed of 5m/s Fog though, yeah. I get that one.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
The higher the tech, the more that can go wrong.
- dnautics 5y ago
  navy doesn't seem to care (see USS Ford)
  - adventured 5y ago
    The US Navy has a lot of active carriers and few superpower-scale threats, so they're taking an opportunity to experiment (USS Ford) and can afford to do it (for now). It seems like the right thing to do while they can. Ford is the largest warship ever constructed, it's not very surprising they might have problems with a new class.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
    The navy was dragged into that against their preference by Rumsfeld and the rest of the "Revolution in Military Affairs" people. The original plan was for the first Ford class ships to use conventional catapults, etc, while the new stuff was developed and refined in parallel, to be integrated once it was proven ready. That wasn't fast enough for the Revolution folks, who insisted that the most aggressive timeline possible be followed. Nearly everything those people touched has turned into a disaster, costing tax payers billions.
WastingMyTime89 5y ago
There is something you are missing obviously. Naval engineers are not dumb. > it shouldn't be hard to track and aim a 30cm object at 100 m with a laser that is moving +/- 5-10 meters at a speed of 5m/s Boats don’t move only in one direction. They have side-way vibrations along the three special axis and constantly rotate along two. The 100m is extremely close for two boats and I think you don’t realise what a heavy sea looks like (understandable if you have never been far from shore). Navigating in nine meters high waves is not exceptional for a military boat. You are constantly losing line of sights with distant boats. Keeping a laser on something fast is doable (that’s part of what an optical targeting system does) but staying fixed on a small receiver gets tricky. I don’t think the win in bandwidth and latency justifies the hassle which is why I don’t believe ship-to-ship laser communication will ever happen. Ship-to-space however, that wouldn’t surprise me.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Why would the ship to space need to be a laser? We're already doing ship to space with radio waves, even encrypted, with a much more forgiving benefit of not needing to be so damn precise to hit the target.
jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
Free space optics links are quite finicky even between stationary ground stations. Additionally, LoS communications are limited by the horizon. The mast antennas on most warships are something like 40 meters tall, meaning it's only 20 km to the horizon. Ships operating as one group routinely spread further than that. NoS communications on ships just use satellite links, which are also difficult to detect or jam if you're not along the axis. There are directional LoS microwave links used in some contexts, such as China's stations scattered around the South China Sea. The pointing/stabilization issues are much less severe with these.

wizzwizz4 5y ago

The higher the tech, the more that can go wrong.

dnautics 5y ago
navy doesn't seem to care (see USS Ford)
- adventured 5y ago
  The US Navy has a lot of active carriers and few superpower-scale threats, so they're taking an opportunity to experiment (USS Ford) and can afford to do it (for now). It seems like the right thing to do while they can. Ford is the largest warship ever constructed, it's not very surprising they might have problems with a new class.
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
  The navy was dragged into that against their preference by Rumsfeld and the rest of the "Revolution in Military Affairs" people. The original plan was for the first Ford class ships to use conventional catapults, etc, while the new stuff was developed and refined in parallel, to be integrated once it was proven ready. That wasn't fast enough for the Revolution folks, who insisted that the most aggressive timeline possible be followed. Nearly everything those people touched has turned into a disaster, costing tax payers billions.

WastingMyTime89 5y ago

There is something you are missing obviously. Naval engineers are not dumb. > it shouldn't be hard to track and aim a 30cm object at 100 m with a laser that is moving +/- 5-10 meters at a speed of 5m/s Boats don’t move only in one direction. They have side-way vibrations along the three special axis and constantly rotate along two. The 100m is extremely close for two boats and I think you don’t realise what a heavy sea looks like (understandable if you have never been far from shore). Navigating in nine meters high waves is not exceptional for a military boat. You are constantly losing line of sights with distant boats. Keeping a laser on something fast is doable (that’s part of what an optical targeting system does) but staying fixed on a small receiver gets tricky. I don’t think the win in bandwidth and latency justifies the hassle which is why I don’t believe ship-to-ship laser communication will ever happen. Ship-to-space however, that wouldn’t surprise me.

dylan604 5y ago
Why would the ship to space need to be a laser? We're already doing ship to space with radio waves, even encrypted, with a much more forgiving benefit of not needing to be so damn precise to hit the target.

jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago

Free space optics links are quite finicky even between stationary ground stations. Additionally, LoS communications are limited by the horizon. The mast antennas on most warships are something like 40 meters tall, meaning it's only 20 km to the horizon. Ships operating as one group routinely spread further than that. NoS communications on ships just use satellite links, which are also difficult to detect or jam if you're not along the axis. There are directional LoS microwave links used in some contexts, such as China's stations scattered around the South China Sea. The pointing/stabilization issues are much less severe with these.