Rear Adm. Nevin Carr is the Chief of Naval Research, in charge of hundreds and hundreds of different R&D programs — about three billion dollars’ worth of science projects, next-gen gadgets, and upgrades to the Navy arsenal. But of all those many efforts, there are two that get Carr really pumped: a superlaser and a hypersonic gun. Both are capable of revolutionizing how the Navy fights at sea. Both are considered “marquee” programs by Carr as his legion of scientists and engineers.

And both of them are on the precipice of destruction from Congress.

Lawmakers have traditionally left military research budgets intact, tinkering at the margins only when they feel money is being seriously misspent or the R&D projects are seriously off-track. Rarely, if ever, do they go after a service’s top research priority.

Last Friday, however, the Senate Armed Services Committee broke with tradition, and declared that Carr’s babies, the Free Electron Laser and the Electromagnetic Railgun, weren’t fit to grow up any more. The panel said funds for the programs should be terminated.

Neither project was in trouble — in fact, both had recently broken records in their respective fields. But in Washington’s new atmosphere of austerity, the ray gun and the railgun were suddenly considered futuristic luxuries, not the “game-changers” Carr had touted for so long.

The recommended recommended cuts took the Navy by surprise, according to ace naval reporter Sam LaGrone at Jane’s. Carr’s shop has said nothing since then, referring all questions to Big Navy.

Big Navy, at least, isn’t throwing in the towel.

“The programs were part of the president’s budget and we hope to see them in the final bill,” says Lt. Cmdr. Justin Cole, a Navy spokesman. “We will continue to work with Congress to answer any questions they may have about the programs in an effort to secure authorization and funding for their continuation.”

But the strongest advocate for both the Free Electron Laser and the railgun has been Carr himself. He told Danger Room in February that technology had basically maxed out the possibilities for hitting “maneuvering pieces of metal in the sky with other maneuvering pieces of metal.”

The solution, as Carr sees it, is hypersonic guns and multi-wavelength lasers. They’d allow the Navy’s surface ships to fire at targets from hundreds of miles away and burn incoming missiles out of the sky. For the Senate panel to put them on the chopping block is to ask the Navy to rewrite what it considers the future of surface-ship defense.

Consider the railgun, for instance. When it gets up to its full energy allotment of 64 kilojoules, it’ll fire a bullet 200 nautical miles in six minutes. The five-inch guns on destroyers? 13 miles. The 57-mm guns on the Littoral Combat Ship? Seven to eight. BAE’s Advanced Gun System, still in development, tops out at 83 nautical miles.

“enduring requirement for fire support from naval vessels in the range of 41-63 nautical miles.” (.pdf) Anything that would reduce the ranges of Navy guns would be “something of concern.”

As for the Free Electron Laser, the Senate panel doesn’t recommend terminating the Navy’s entire laser programs — just the “marquee.” Unlike other lasers, the Free Electron Laser operates on multiple wavelengths, so as to minimize interference from all the crud in sea air. “The ability to tune even a little bit would allow us to find favorable wavelengths in the atmosphere and then optimize the beam for the conditions of the day,” Carr said. “That’s very, very powerful.”

“You’re beginning, maybe, to see the end of the dominance of the missile,” Carr’s boss, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead said. “I also think you’re beginning to also see the increase in the depth of the magazine chain. In other words, the capacity’s going to change, because you essentially have a rechargeable projectile.” Advantage United States, as the rise of lasers will lead to a geostrategic division into “countries that can afford to go into directed energy and countries that can’t.”

The committee doesn’t think it’s worth it. It thinks the technology isn’t sufficiently proven — and, indeed, neither weapon will be ready until at least the next decade under optimal conditions. But the Navy’s got a lot of work to do to convince the Senate that its futuristic weapons are worth saving. And if those weapons get killed, it’s an open question whether any high-tech weapons priority for the military is safe from the chopping block.

Photo: Office of Naval Research