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WATCH: Navy's New Laser Gun in Action at Sea

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Screen Shot 2014-12-10 at 11.33.07 PMA new laser gun mounted on the USS Ponce has been operational for months in the Persian Gulf, and it has exceeded expectations as far as its range and durability, senior Navy officers said Wednesday.

The Navy calls it the LaWS, short for laser weapon system. It was installed on the Ponce over the summer, and deployed this fall. Video released by the service on Wednesday shows it taking out an incoming speedboat in a test at a long, undisclosed range with directed energy. No laser beam can be seen, but the boat bursts into flames.

“It’s almost like a Hubble telescope at sea,” said Rear Adm. Matthew L. Klunder, the Navy’s chief of naval research. “Literally, we’re able to get that kind of power and magnification.”

The USS Ponce conducts tests of the Office of Naval Research-funded Laser Weapons System (LaWS) while in the Persian Gulf on Nov. 14. Directed energy weapons can counter asymmetric threats, including unmanned and light aircraft and small attack boats. (John F. Williams/U.S. Navy)

The weapon has been in development for years. In a 2011 test, a laser was used to take out multiple small boats from a U.S. destroyer. In 2012, the LaWS downed seeral downed aircraft, Navy officials said.

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Navy spy "fish" could be operational next year

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navy_surveillanceby Mike Hixenbaugh

It looks like a fish, sort of. l

It swims like one too, if you squint. l

It’s even named after a fish – OK, a Disney one.

The Navy is hoping that’ll be enough to get the little swimmer into enemy territory undetected to patrol and protect U.S. ships and ports from harm.

Project Silent Nemo is under way this week at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek, where a team of civilian engineers and military officers are testing the capabilities of a 5-foot, 100-pound experimental robot that’s designed to look and swim like a bluefin tuna.

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Russia and China Partner for Largest Joint Naval Drill in Their History

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Photo Credit: APChinese and Russian navies have partnered for the countries’ largest joint naval drill in history, set to start Friday in the Sea of Japan.

Military analysts see the joint drill as yet another sign of the countries’ growing friendship, post-Cold War days…

The drills are the largest in scope that China’s ever held with a foreign nation. The country has been actively building up its navy, AP reported.

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Navy Deploying New Attack Laser to Persian Gulf (+video)

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Photo Credit: NY Times

The Navy is going to sea for the first time with a laser attack weapon that has been shown in tests to disable patrol boats and blind or destroy surveillance drones.

A prototype shipboard laser will be deployed on a converted amphibious transport and docking ship in the Persian Gulf, where Iranian fast-attack boats have harassed American warships and where the government in Tehran is building remotely piloted aircraft carrying surveillance pods and, someday potentially, rockets.

The laser will not be operational until next year, but the announcement on Monday by Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, the chief of naval operations, seemed meant as a warning to Iran not to step up activity in the gulf in the next few months if tensions increase because of sanctions and the impasse in negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program. The Navy released video and still images of the laser weapon burning through a drone during a test firing.

The laser is designed to carry out a graduated scale of missions, from burning through a fast-attack boat or a drone to producing a nonlethal burst to “dazzle” an adversary’s sensors and render them useless without causing any other physical damage. The Pentagon has a long history of grossly inflating claims for its experimental weapons, but a nonpartisan study for Congress said the weapon offered the Navy historic opportunities.

Watch video here:

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Military Warns Cuts Would Create ‘Hollow Force’ Akin To 1970s

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The U.S. armed services, widely recognized as the world’s most ready and mobile military, is painting a picture of itself as a stagnant force trapped at home under automatic spending cuts just three weeks away.

Army brigades won’t be ready to fight. Navy aircraft carriers won’t deployed. The Air Force won’t be able to operate radar surveillance 24 hours a day.

The dire scenarios are contained in a series of memos sent to Congress and obtained by The Washington Times. They stir memories of the late 1970s, when the Army declared itself a “hollow force” because depleted combat units could not perform in a war.

In the current instance, an Army memo uses the physiological term “atrophy” to underscore a warning that it will not be able to command brigade combat teams that can respond to hot spots outside of Afghanistan and South Korea.

“The strategic impact is a rapid atrophy of unit combat skills with a failure to meet demands of the National Military Strategy by the end of this year,” the Army wrote in a recent memo to Capitol Hill.

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Another Democratic Screw-up: DNC Paid Tribute to US Navy Veterans Using Images of Russian Warships

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DNC, Democrats, Russia Warships

On the last night of the Democratic National Convention, a retired Navy four-star took the stage to pay tribute to veterans. Behind him, on a giant screen, the image of four hulking warships reinforced his patriotic message.

But there was a big mistake in the stirring backdrop: those are Russian warships.

While retired Adm. John Nathman, a former commander of Fleet Forces Command, honored vets as America’s best, the ships from the Russian Federation Navy were arrayed like sentinels on the big screen above.

These were the very Soviet-era combatants that Nathman and Cold Warriors like him had once squared off against.

“The ships are definitely Russian,” said noted naval author Norman Polmar after reviewing hi-resolution photos from the event. “There’s no question of that in my mind.”

Naval experts concluded the background was a photo composite of Russian ships that were overflown by what appear to be U.S. trainer jets. It remains unclear how or why the Democratic Party used what’s believed to be images of the Russian Black Sea Fleet at their convention.

A spokesman for the Democratic National Convention Committee was not able to immediately comment Tuesday, saying he had to track down personnel to find out what had happened.

The veteran who spotted the error and notified Navy Times said he was immediately taken aback.

“I was kind of in shock,” said Rob Barker, 38, a former electronics warfare technician who left the Navy in 2006. Having learned to visually identify foreign ships by their radars, Barker recognized the closest ship as the Kara-class cruiser Kerch.

“An immediate apology [from the committee] would be very nice,” Barker said. “Maybe acknowledge the fact that yes, they screwed up.”

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Pathetic: Obama “consoles” families of dead Navy SEAL’s with form letter & electric pen signature

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On August 6, 2011, 30 US service members were killed when a CH-47 Chinook helicopter they were being transported in crashed in Wardak province, Afghanistan. It was the deadliest single loss for U.S. forces in the decade-long war in Afghanistan. 17 members of the elite Navy SEALs were killed in the crash.

Yesterday, Karen and Billy Vaughn, parents of Aaron Carson Vaughn, spoke at the Defending the Defenders forum sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots outside the RNC Convention in Tampa. Karen brought a copy of the form letter they were sent following their son’s death.

It’s a form letter. It was signed by an electric pen.

That’s not all.

Karen Vaughn reached out to the parents of the other SEALs killed in that crash. Their letters were all the same.

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Probing Obama: Russian sub moves undetected in Gulf of Mexico for a month

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Photo credit: DVIDSHUB

A Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine armed with long-range cruise missiles operated undetected in the Gulf of Mexico for several weeks and its travel in strategic U.S. waters was only confirmed after it left the region, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

It is only the second time since 2009 that a Russian attack submarine has patrolled so close to U.S. shores.

The stealth underwater incursion in the Gulf took place at the same time Russian strategic bombers made incursions into restricted U.S. airspace near Alaska and California in June and July, and highlights a growing military assertiveness by Moscow.

The submarine patrol also exposed what U.S. officials said were deficiencies in U.S. anti-submarine warfare capabilities—forces that are facing cuts under the Obama administration’s plan to reduce defense spending by $487 billion over the next 10 years.

The Navy is in charge of detecting submarines, especially those that sail near U.S. nuclear missile submarines, and uses undersea sensors and satellites to locate and track them.

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US rushing dozens of submersible killer drones to Persian Gulf

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The Navy is rushing dozens of unmanned underwater craft to the Persian Gulf to help detect and destroy mines in a major military buildup aimed at preventing Iran from closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the event of a crisis, U.S. officials said.

The tiny SeaFox submersibles each carry an underwater television camera, homing sonar and an explosive charge. The Navy bought them in May after an urgent request by Marine Gen. James Mattis, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East.

Each submersible is about 4 feet long and weighs less than 100 pounds. The craft are intended to boost U.S. military capabilities as negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program appear to have stalled. Three rounds of talks since April between Iran and the five countries in the United Nations Security Council plus Germany have made little progress.

Some U.S. officials are wary that Iran may respond to tightening sanctions on its banking and energy sectors, including a European Union oil embargo, by launching or sponsoring attacks on oil tankers or platforms in the Persian Gulf. Some officials in Tehran have threatened to close the narrow waterway, a choke point for a fifth of the oil traded worldwide.

The first of the SeaFox submersibles arrived in the Gulf in recent weeks, officials said, along with four MH-53 Sea Dragon helicopters and four minesweeping ships, part of a larger buildup of U.S. naval, air and ground forces in the region aimed at Iran.

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Photo credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery