{"id":35255,"date":"2018-06-24T02:33:46","date_gmt":"2018-06-24T02:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/uncategorized\/2018\/06\/24\/future-navy-weapons-will-need-lots-power-thats-a-huge-engineering-challenge\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T00:25:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:25:47","slug":"future-navy-weapons-will-need-lots-power-thats-a-huge-engineering-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/intel-geoint\/sensors\/2018\/06\/24\/future-navy-weapons-will-need-lots-power-thats-a-huge-engineering-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Future US Navy weapons will need lots of power. That\u2019s a huge engineering challenge."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2015 The U.S. Navy is convinced that the next generation of ships will need to integrate lasers<\/a>, electromagnetic rail guns<\/a> and other power-hungry weapons and sensors to take on peer competitors in the coming decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, integrating futuristic technologies onto existing platforms, even on some of the newer ships with plenty of excess power capacity, will still be an incredibly difficult engineering challenge, experts say. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capt. Mark Vandroff, the current commanding officer of the Carderock Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center and the former Arleigh Burke-class destroyer program manager who worked on the DDG Flight III, told the audience at last week\u2019s American Society of Naval Engineers symposium that adding extra electric-power capacity in ships currently in design was a good idea, but that the weapons and systems of tomorrow will pose a significant challenge to naval engineers when it comes time to back-fit them to existing platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cElectrical architecture on ships is hard,\u201d Vandroff said.<\/p>\n\n\n\t