Pictures of USS Dewey with what might be a laser weapon....

These pictures were taken very recently. The large white boxes in the pictures are Caterpillar power generators, which are apparently used to power the laser.





This one is bit older, taken from last year.

The top one looks like if you cross pac-man with terminator.

Also, ossum-beans

It is possible that it is a weapon but I would argue it is more likely to be a sensor system that they don't want to tell about

"Damnit, Siri! I said boot them out, not shoot them!"

Neat!

I found the name of laser weapon. It's Navy Laser Weapon System (LaWS), one of US Navy's laser programs that weren't cancelled by the US Congress.

apparently I was wrong then

Also known as the Frank Zappa.

Is it just me, or is the laser on the helo landing pad?

Yep. Not that I can blame them, they need somewhere to put it with alot of space so they can properly test it at sea. It's not like the ship is going anywhere to fight and the laser will likely be removed afterwards.

That dome looks like one of those Astrohaven observatories that they advertise in Astronomy magazine

I wouldn't be surprised if it was one. Or at least identical, functionally.

They decided to mount it on the USS DEWwy? Nice.

It looks more like a test mounting, not permanent.

Are the generators because they are needed (ship can't supply the power) or because it's a standalone kit just stuck on the helo deck?

It's most likely it is much simpler to just use external power generators rather than rewiring USS Dewey's power distribution system to power the laser weapon. And it is definitely a standalone kit because it is designed to be transportable, as they could have it deployed to many different testing areas.

Besides the high end models of Caterpillar's rental power generator line could generate power output up to 1.5 megawatt.

So it's unlikely that class of ship is going to have the thing in active service? Makes a bit more sense as it's been mentioned that a number of newer classes of ships have been specifically wired to generate and transmit silly amounts of power to places where it would be very useful to put a gun/laser. And one concern of retrofitting older ships was precisely that they likely don't have that energy to spare nor the wiring needed.

Still, pretty cool if it works.

Could this laser weapon be on possible future ships of the Burke and Zummwalt classes?

I believe the plan was to use the lasers to replace CIWS guns or at least augment the CIWS guns, and to use Railguns to replace the 5inch guns and missiles.

Though that begs the question if they DO replace the missile launchers when they mount a rail gun what would they do with all that extra space?

SAMs, other missiles that the railgun can't effectively replace, a second railgun, more ammo/power systems for railguns/lasers, more crew space? All seem like reasonable ideas.

Well except the more crew space part I think the USN is all about reducing the number of crew on ships, I mean look at the Zummwalt it's bigger than a Burke but supposedly will have a crew of only about 84

I doubt it will actually work that way though

The current mounting keeps the ship from using helocopters so they will have to find somewhere else to put it.

You think they'll have a larger crew? I personally thought 84 was a bit low for a ship that's quite a bit larger than a modern destroyer that requires a crew of 100-350. But then again I dont know all the jobs required on a warship to make their crews so large in the first place so I'm no expert.