Navy Develops Paradigm-Changing Power Systems Key to Fire Lasers & Ship Weapons

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

Ships can be saved from destruction when long-range sensors detect incoming enemy anti-ship missiles, weapons can be launched with precision guidance to hit enemy ships and submarines, maritime combat missions can be safeguarded and extended and high-energy lasers can incinerate enemy drones, helicopters, ships and small boats. 

However, all of this relies upon power and energy systems, the storage and delivery of energy and the technical structures and interfaces through which they operate.

Lingering beneath the visible surface of ship combat performance and functionality is a set of crucial technologies, systems and components providing structure, continued operations and maintenance for the platform. Maintenance, energy storage, mobile applications of power and effort to decrease a hardware footprint and increase operational efficiency all provide the foundation for ship combat success.

With the advent of an entirely new generation of digital computing, networking technologies and power-reliant weapons systems, ship commanders and weapons developers have been deeply immersed in trying to greatly improve energy density, performance and storage to enable new applications such as lasers. 

Transportable, efficient, high-density power systems and energy storage, for example, are crucial to a ship’s ability to fire a new generation of long-range, high-powered, scalable laser weapons. Along with lasers, adding integrated power systems not only enables lasers but also supports radar technologies, EW applications and some command and control linked fire control systems.

New innovations have been needed to accommodate a paradigm-changing level of on-board power and electricity that is sustainable, storable and able to be monitored. Form factor, or simply size of hardware components, continues to present challenges for ship builders seeking to store and operate with enough energy to power up and sustain a new generation of ship-board technologies.

The Navy’s nascent future destroyer platform, called DDG (X), will of course require massive amounts of transportable power and energy to operate as intended in modern maritime warfare, so the Navy and its industry partners are taking specific, new, innovative measures to greatly reduce the needed hardware footprint, streamline and network energy systems, maximize power output and efficiency and monitor critical maintenance, performance and sustainability for the ship.