The Advanced Tactical Laser aircraft flies over Albuquerque, N.M.
(Credit: Ed Turner, Boeing)The first ray guns to be used in combat may well be aerial weapons, and not phaserlike side arms in the hands of foot soldiers.
Certainly Boeing is working in that direction. For several years it's been providing regular updates on the (notably slow) progress of its marquee directed-energy effort, the Airborne Laser, to be carried aloft by a heavily modified 747 that's intended to stop ballistic missiles during their launch phase. Now the defense contractor is touting the steps it's taking with a smaller counterpart designed to strike ground targets, the Advanced Tactical Laser.
As of this month, the high-energy chemical laser that is the actual weapons portion of the ATL is now installed in a C-130H airplane, a well-proven design taking on yet another new mission. The 12,000-plus-pound chemical laser system is taking up residence alongside a separate beam control system, installed at an earlier date, that functions as the tracking and targeting apparatus.
This would hardly be the first time that the C-130, primarily a cargo and troop transport aircraft, has functioned as a gunship. The well-armed AC-130 variant saw much action in Vietnam, and has also flown in subsequent conflicts.
An earlier incarnation of the ball turret, in restored B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft flying in 2002.
(Credit: SSGT William Greer, USAF )The business end of the ATL will be a rotating turret in the belly of the fuselage--reminiscent of the one-squished-man ball turret of the B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator planes used in World War II, hauntingly depicted by poet Randall Jarrell in his "Death of the Ball-Turret Gunner." By contrast, the 747-borne Airborne Laser will fire through the nose of the aircraft.
Sometime in 2008, the ATL is expected to demonstrate its prowess in flight, directing the high-energy laser at what Boeing calls "mission-representative ground targets." In tests at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., earlier this year, a surrogate low-power laser hit targets on more than a dozen occasions, and laboratory testing of the high-energy laser wrapped up after more than 50 firings, according to Boeing.
Aerial tests of the bigger, ballistic-missile-minded Airborne Laser are scheduled for 2009.
Boeing doesn't just have its head in the clouds when it comes to directed-energy weapons. It's also working on a more down-to-Earth Humvee-mounted laser shooter.
This is how the Pentagon envisions the Airborne Laser in action.
(Credit: U.S. Missile Defense Agency)The Airborne Laser has taken another step forward in its long slog off the drawing board and into the Pentagon's arsenal.
The first-of-its-kind 747-400F this month completed a series of low-power test flights, using onboard infrared sensors to locate "an instrumented target board" on an Air Force NC-135E aircraft. Once the Airborne Laser(ABL) found the target, two solid-state illuminator lasers tracked the target and assessed atmospheric conditions--the later function being key to plotting a path to the target for the weapons laser. Since the high-energy COIL (chemical oxygen iodine laser) weapons system has yet to be installed, a low-power surrogate laser fired at the NC-135E.
The accomplishment, lead contractor Boeing said Friday, is proof positive that the ABL's battle management and beam control/fire control systems can support the plane's ultimate mission: intercepting a ballistic missile and destroying it in flight.
If all goes according to plan, and that's a big if, the ABL with a fully installed and tested high-energy laser will go up against a soaring ballistic missile in a test in 2009.
Many of the ifs are technical, but there are political considerations as well. The ABL program has been an expensive undertaking over the years, dating back to the mid-1990s. According to a report issued this summer by the Congressional Research Service, about $4.3 billion has been spent on the program so far (with $630 million allocated in the current fiscal year), but both the House and the Senate seem set to give the Bush Administration substantially less than it's asking for the upcoming fiscal year.
In time, the government is looking to field as many as seven ABL aircraft.
For the Airborne Laser, Boeing is working with fellow defense contractor Northrop Grumman, which is building the high-energy laser. But when it comes to truck-mounted laser weapons, the two companies are competing.
Remember the scene in Independence Day where the alien invaders blow up the White House with some sort of interstellar death ray? We Earthlings are still a long, long way from that sort of weaponry--just how far will depend, as so many things do, on budget battles in Washington.
The Airborne Laser aircraft at Andrews Air Force base on June 20, 2007.
(Credit: Air Force photo by Bobby Jones)The Pentagon's premier "directed energy" weapons system is a missile-zapping laser that could someday soon be tooling around in a modified 747, if all goes right for a program valued at $3.8 billion. This week, the Airborne Laser aircraft paid a visit to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland--well known, of course, as a commuter airport of sorts for the president--as the destination of what the Pentagon says was the plane's first-ever cross-country flight.
Washington area residents need not worry about a misfire. The plane isn't yet equipped with the "megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser beam" weapons system; that work is slated for sometime later this year. The Pentagon says the chemical laser has had 70 successful firings (on the ground, that is) over the past three years, and it is preparing for what it hopes will be the first takedown of a ballistic missile target in mid-2009. Eventually, the battle-ready chemical load would be sufficient to destroy an unspecified "many" missiles.
"We are going to put that big laser in the back...and then we're ready to shoot a missile down," Air Force Col. John Daniels, program director, said in a statement. "The biggest challenge we have right now is integration. The optics system is working. The battle management system works well. We even tracked an (intercontinental ballistic missile) with the sensors on the airplane."
Daniels continued: "When you put those big pieces together, and you get the software talking to each other and the systems, that's not trivial. It's really an integration challenge."
The political challenge, meanwhile, is to keep the funding alive. Reuters reported Thursday that preliminary votes in Congress have slashed between $200 million and $250 million from the program's $549 million portion of the proposed defense budget for fiscal 2008. Cuts on that level, Reuters said, would set the program back three years.
Daniels told reporters that the current level of budget cuts would delay the shootdown attempt by at least two years, according to Reuters.
Whatever happens in Congress, it's a long road ahead for the Airborne Laser as a truly battle-ready system. From this one plane so far, the Air Force aims to build a "production representative" model. The eventual goal is for the Air Force to have seven laser-equipped aircraft, all based in the U.S., that would cost about $1.5 billion apiece.
From Andrews Air Force Base, the Airborne Laser prototype plane was set to fly back to Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., where flight tests are set to wrap up this summer. The program is based at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico and is managed by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.
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