The U.S. Navy Will Soon Have Megawatt Laser Cannons on Its Warships

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By David Axe,The National Interest

The U.S. Navy on Oct. 17, 2019 began shipping a powerful new laser weapon from a Northrop Grumman facility in Redondo Beach, California to a Navy base in San Diego.

This article first appeared in 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

The War Zone was the first to report on the painstaking process of moving the bulky weapon.

In San Diego, workers will install the 150-kilowatt laser on the amphibious assault ship USS Portland. The vessel’s crew plans to test the new weapon beginning this year as part of an accelerating effort by the Navy to install laser cannons on its warships.

Northrop Grumman built the laser under the auspices of the Navy’s $53-million Solid-State Laser Technology Maturation program, which launched in 2015.