Navy Buildings High Energy Laser Weapon Test Center Going Up 19 Miles West of Trancas
Written by 991KBU on July 19, 2022
A high energy laser weapons test lab has been flying low … but is now opened by the U S Navy at Naval Station Point Mugu.
KBUU News has learned that the U S Navy has built a 23 million dollar … 18,500 square-foot lab building … 19 miles up the coast from Trancas.
It’s called the Directed Energy Systems Integration Lab … the DESIL facility’s job … to test high powered lasers as weapons. It opened quietly last December.
And the Navy says it will help the Navy to test deadly laser weapons in a maritime environment.
Navy officials said the availability to use the 36,000 mile of ocean testing range off of Point Mugu to test the facility is why the laser lab will be placed at Navy Base Ventura County.
“The value of the Pt. Mugu Sea Range is that you can put a facility of this nature right on the coast line, and it can operate in the sea range and take it vantage of that testing capability” said Thomas Dowd, Director of the Navy’s test range department.
As part of the new laser testing the Navy will examine how high energy laser weapons on ships will perform in moisture, humidity, salt, fog, and bad weather, and how ship systems will generate the huge amounts of power needed to fire off and then cool down the lasers.
This comes as the US Navy has just announced that it has picked the most aggressive course of action to expand weapons testing on the ocean off of its Point Mugu Naval Station.
It has just filed an environmental impact report that says it plans to increase the tempo and scope of planned operations – above … on … and below the surface of the sea off of Malibu.
In the notice filed late last week… The Navy says its preferred alternative is the highest potential annual level of increased tempo for planned operations.
And that will include both existing types of warfare and unspecified new technologies systems and platforms that may emerge.
Translation … whales will continue to get pummeled by bombs.
The Navy says that the use of explosive munitions in the test range will not cause any injuries or deaths to marine mammals… but it could damage their hearing.
And the Navy says it is not expect impacts to marine mammal populations from being hit by bombs or torpedoes… or from the energy or physical disturbance from explosions.
Nevertheless they say that endangered blue whales fin whales humpback whales and sperm whales… As well as Guadalupe for seals… will be adversely affected by the Navy’s explosives.
How will large marine mammals be affected by lasers fired above and presumably into the ocean?? The Navy says that future testing of land-based targets at the Pt Mugu laser test site may affect migratory birds, but says that is a matter for future study.
