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“The Type 002 is likely the carrier Admiral Wu Shengli talked about before he retired that will incorporate a catapult and arresting gear to enable it to deploy larger aircraft and do so more quickly,” the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Studies’ Bryan Clark, one of the foremost naval thinkers in Washington, told The National Interest. “It will also likely be larger than the Type 001 or the Liaoning, enabling it to carry more aircraft. The PLAN also wants to expand the range of their carrier-based aircraft, and more importantly, they need to be able to launch early warning and electronic warfare aircraft as well as larger fighter-bombers that can carry more weapons. They need catapults and arresting gear to deploy these kinds of aircraft.” For China, the new carrier is important as it expands its power projection capabilities. “Strategically, China wants to be able to use their aircraft carriers to expand the reach of their mainland-based strike, ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and EW [electronic warfare] systems, so a larger carrier will be helpful to that goal,” Clark said. “Secondarily, this will give them a carrier able to operate more independently of land-based aircraft, since it will be able to carry larger (and slower) logistics and early warning aircraft. That will be helpful in protecting sea lanes farther from China, such as in the Indian Ocean.”

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has appointed Barbara Humpton, Randy Forbes and Adam Frankel to its board of directors. CSBA President and CEO Thomas Mahnken, said in a statement that the convergence of military and economic instruments is crucial to the national security debate and the new board members’ experiences reflect this intersection.

That emphasis on targeting the enemy’s stuff rather than enemy troops was the case on Wednesday. Lt. Gen. Marshall B. Webb, the head of Air Force Special Operations Command, laid out an operational scenario: pilots on a dangerous raid might use a laser mounted on an orbiting gunship to take out an enemy truck and a drone. Webb has said that he wants to test a laser aboard an AC-130J within a year. Webb, who was speaking at the Direct Energy Summit in downtown Washington, D.C., was asked about targeting humans. “My intent right now is to prove we can do a demo and do some specific things with this: control the beam; contain jitter,” he said.

This ability to learn through prototypes and experiments has always been resident in the MDA but is new for the Navy. The Navy recently created a Surface Navy Laser Weapon System program as its very first Rapid Prototyping, Experimentation and Demonstration (RPED) project, which allows the service to put new technologies in the field, learn lessons early to reduce risk, and decide whether and how to proceed before spending too much money, Rear Adm. Mike Manazir, deputy chief of naval operations for warfare systems (OPNAV N9), said at the summit, cohosted by Booz Allen Hamilton and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Accordingly, the agency plans to first explore if lasers can be made light enough to fly on a UAV while also being effective at standoff ranges, Rear Admiral Jon Hill, MDA's deputy director, said during 29 March remarks at an event sponsored by Booz Allen Hamilton and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Rear Adm. Mike Manazir, deputy chief of naval operations for warfare systems, said at the 2017 Directed Energy Summit that the Surface Navy Laser Weapons System program seeks to increase laser weapons’ power, beam quality and capacity to modularize, Megan Eckstein wrote.