Lidar in amphibious and inshore warfare

What role can lidar play in naval warfare?

It is most useful for inshore and amphibious operations, where it can improve terrain awareness alongside radar; it does not remove the deep-water submarine problem.

Close-in and amphibious operations are the strongest naval use case for lidar because terrain masking can make a radar return difficult to interpret. Overlaying lidar terrain data with radar would help a ship distinguish land from a moving contact and might have reduced risks during the Falklands War. Bathymetric methods can add information in shallow water, but they are not accurate or deep-reaching enough to remove the submarine or mine-warfare problem. Greater processing power and artificial intelligence may improve classification without changing the physical limits of light and water. Smoke and other airborne particles are less decisive at lidar's short ranges because a system taking many measurements can average much of the interference.