Franco Lolan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A Boeing Co.-led team has successfully fired for the first time a powerful laser meant to fly aboard a modified 747 as part of a U.S. ballistic missile defense shield, officials said on Friday.

The test, dubbed "First Light" by insiders, lasted only a fraction of a second but gave the project an important boost at a time it was deemed at risk of cuts or cancellation.

The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency described the event -- carried out on Wednesday in a 747 fuselage on the ground at Edwards Air Force Base in California -- as a "landmark achievement" for the so-called Airborne Laser system.

"It showed they work," said Kenneth Englade, an agency spokesman, of the laser's six identical, pickup-truck-sized, modules linked to fire as a single unit. "The rest is fine-tuning."

The Chemical Oxygen Iodine laser is built by Northrop Grumman Corp. It includes breakthrough optics designed to focus a basketball-sized spot of heat on a missile's skin to rupture it up to hundreds of miles away.

Pentagon officials envision several such aircraft flying by turns near North Korea or another potential foe's territory. The goal is to detect, track and destroy a missile when that would be easiest, before it releases a warhead that could be tipped with chemical, nuclear or germ weapons.

Demonstrated progress, particularly in achieving "First Light," would be critical to continuation of the project, negotiators from the House of Representatives and Senate armed services committees said in a report last month accompanying the 2005 Defense Authorization Act.

Congress authorized President Bush's request for $474.3 million for the program in fiscal 2005, which began October 1, as part of the $10 billion budgeted for missile defense development and deployment.

Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester under former President Bill Clinton and a critic of early missile defense deployment plans, described the test on Wednesday as very important to people working on the program.

"They deserve a lot of credit for having gotten this far," he said in a telephone interview. "But they've still got a long way to go" to demonstrate shoot-down capability.

Among other technical challenges, Coyle said, engineers must figure out ways to fire the laser for the longer time needed to zap a missile without damaging the optics through which the beam passes -- a kind of technical Catch-22.

In coming months, Englade said, engineers hope to boost the duration and power of the laser's beam. It will then be installed on a 747-400F aircraft for a test that includes shooting down a dummy ballistic missile over the Pacific. No date has been set for that test.

A multibillion-dollar ground-based system for detecting and destroying missiles fired from a country like North Korea is due to be declared ready for operation by the end of next month.

The ground-based system, also integrated by Boeing, is meant to be the first leg in a system that could ultimately include the airborne laser as well as interceptor rockets that could become the first weapons based in space.

Franco Lolan

Is it feasible? Will technology work? Is it worth the expenditure?

Confed999

These guys seem to think it is. Hopefully we won't have to find out for sure.

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

Franco Lolan

lol

Anon

Even if it's cancelled, it's technology will be used to build a better next generation system.

Jay

Here we go with the life history of ABL.....

ABL YAL 1A AIRBORNE LASER, USA

The US Air Force Airborne Laser, (ABL), designated YAL-1A, is a high energy laser weapon system for the destruction of tactical theatre ballistic missiles, which is carried on a modified Boeing 747-400F freighter aircraft. The ABL is being developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory and Team ABL, comprising Boeing, TRW (now Northrop Grumman Space Technologies) and Lockheed Martin. Boeing is responsible for program management, systems integration, battle management system and modification of the 747-400F aircraft. TRW Inc is building the laser systems. Lockheed Martin Space Systems is responsible for the target acquisition and beam control systems. The US Missile Defense Agency (previously called the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization) is responsible for the management of the program and it is executed by the USAF from Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

In 1996, the Department of Defense awarded Team ABL a $1.1 billion Program Definition and Risk Reduction (PDRR) contract for the development and test of an Airborne Laser weapon system. During tests at TRW's Capistrano Test Site in 1998, the laser demonstration module achieved a power level 10% higher than the requirement. In April 2000 the ABL final critical design review was completed.

Modification of the aircraft, involving installation of the turret in the aircraft's nose and modifications to accept the laser, optics and computer hardware were completed in May 2002. In July 2002, the modified aircraft took the first of a series of test flights. After receiving airworthiness certification, the aircraft was flown to Edwards Air Force Base, California, in December 2002, for the installation of the beam control system and lasers. The PDRR phase will culminate in 2004 with the destruction of a missile and ABL is planned to enter production from 2006 to 2008. Initial operational capability with three aircraft will be achieved by 2006 and full operational capability with seven aircraft by 2008.

ABL SYSTEMS

The ABL aircraft carries the COIL laser which generates the killer laser beam, an infrared surveillance and high speed target acquisition system and a high precision laser target tracking beam control system.

The laser weapon uses three laser beam systems: the powerful killing laser beam or primary beam, a set of illuminating laser beams and a beacon laser. The primary laser beam is generated by a megawatt chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL) located at the rear of the fuselage, which lases at 1.315 micron wavelength. The high power laser beam travels towards the front of the aircraft through a pipe. The pipe passes through a Station 1000 bulkhead/airlock, which separates the rear fuselage from the forward cabins. The high power beam passes through the fine beam control system mounted on a vibration isolated optical bench. Beam pointing is achieved with very fast, lightweight steering mirrors, which are tilted to follow the target missile.

A low power, multiple beam, track illuminating laser (TILL), being developed by Raytheon Electronic Systems, is used to determine the target's range and provides initial information on the atmosphere through which the beam is being transmitted. The illuminating laser tracks the target and provides aiming data for the primary beam.

The Beacon Illuminating Laser (BILL) has been developed by Northrop Grumman Space Technology. The kilowatt class BILL reflects light from the target to provide data on the rapidly changing characteristics of the atmosphere along the path of the laser beam. This data is used to control a set of deformable mirrors in the beam control system. The mirrors introduce tailored distortions into the COIL laser beam to compensate for atmospheric distortions and allow the COIL laser beam to fall on the target.

OPERATION

The ABL is designed to detect and destroy theatre ballistic missiles in the powered boost phase of flight immediately after missile launch. The aircraft loiters at an altitude of 40,000 feet. Missile launch is detected by a reconnaissance system such as satellite or Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft and threat data is transmitted to the ABL aircraft by Link 16 communications. A suite of infrared, wide-field telescopes installed along the length of the aircraft's fuselage detects the missile plume at ranges up to several hundred km.

The pointing and tracking system tracks the missile and provides launch and predicted impact locations. The turret at the nose of the aircraft swivels towards the target and a 1.5 metre telescope mirror system inside the nose focuses the laser beam onto the missile. The laser beam is locked onto the missile, which is destroyed near its launch area within seconds of lock-on. Where the missile carries liquid fuel, the laser can heat a spot on the missile's fuel tank, causing an increase in internal pressure resulting in catastrophic failure. Alternatively, the missile is heated in an arc around its circumference and crumples under atmospheric drag force or its own G-force.

http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/abl/


Before the Air Force even conceived of the airborne laser (ABL), Air Force personnel, contractors, and scientists worked at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, to develop a laser capable of shooting down a missile. Robert Duffner’s well-documented history mixes physics and personal accounts to trace the development of military lasers from 1958. The task, then as today, was to develop a weapon that could destroy a missile in flight. Doing so required not only a powerful laser but also a tracking mechanism to keep a beam focused on a rapidly moving object. All pieces of such a system were developed at Kirtland over a period of 30 years.

Following the proposal to develop the ABL, the next two decades were spent perfecting chemicals and optics that would make such a device possible. In 1969 Gen John Ryan, chief of staff of the Air Force, authorized an increase in funding and paved the way for feasibility demonstrations since the project showed promise. Hans Mark, secretary of the Air Force, and Harold Brown, secretary of defense, also backed the program.

After more development work, most components of a ground-based test-laser assembly were fitted into an NKC-135 airborne laser lab (ALL). A second KC-135 was modified to act as the diagnostic aircraft, which would receive telemetric data from the ALL and targets. In the event of an explosion from the pressurized chemicals the ALL used to conduct laser tests, the diagnostic aircraft would be able to determine what had happened. After the usual setbacks that accompany such high-technology tests, the ALL successfully shot down a variety of test items, such as an AIM-9 Sidewinder and a BQM-34 drone.

After its successes in 1983, the ALL continued to serve as a test bed for laser experiments. In 1984, however, the aircraft went into flyable storage at Kirtland and in 1988 was retired and flown to the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. This successful program gave the Air Force its first-generation laser and pointer/tracker. Currently, the Air Force is working on its second-generation system—an ABL mounted in a 747-400F—which should enter the inventory in 2006.

Since Airborne Laser provides the best history of developments leading to the ABL, I highly recommend it to any Air Force officer or to anyone interested in laser applications. Well illustrated, this technological success story covers the entire developmental work on airborne lasers, problems encountered, and solutions reached—all in writing that nonscientists can understand.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/a...00/duffner.htm
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...15/ai_75578155

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A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

Jay

Boeing Airborne Laser Lights Up Test Facility

ST. LOUIS , November 12, 2004 - The Boeing [NYSE: BA] Airborne Laser (ABL) team fired a laser beam for the first time using the flight laser modules in the ABL System Integration Lab at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

Boeing is the team lead and system integrator for the ABL system under contract to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, and involves placing a megawatt-class, high-energy Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) on a Boeing 747-400F aircraft to detect, track and destroy ballistic missiles in the boost phase of flight. ABL can also pass information on launch site, target track and predicted impact point to other layers of the global ballistic missile defense system.

"Today, we successfully demonstrated the critical element necessary for the ABL to enter the next phase of its testing," said Jim Evatt, vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems. "We're proud of the ABL team for overcoming the many first-of-a-kind obstacles to get to this point and look forward to the deployment of ABL."

The lasing or "first light" event follows a series of chemical activation tests that occurred over the past year at Edwards AFB. The first light test simultaneously operated the laser's six COIL modules, optics and chemical supply system.

The ABL aircraft also is conducting a series of flight tests to validate the air worthiness and functionality of the battle management and beam control/fire control (BC/FC) segments integrated on the 747-400F ABL aircraft. In addition to determining missile target location, the ABL 's adaptive optics in the BC/FC continually compensate for the atmospheric distortion and platform jitter to focus the high energy beam on the missile body, causing it to structurally fail.

Boeing is the weapon system integrator for ABL and provides the modified aircraft and battle management segments. Other ABL partners include Northrop-Grumman, which provides the laser segment and Lockheed Martin, which provides the BC/FC segment.


Copyright : Boeing

Jay

Airborne Laser Mission

As part of the government’s effort to demonstrate the feasibility of an airborne laser system for defense against those types of missiles, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the U.S. Air Force have contracted with a team composed of Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to build an airborne high-energy laser weapon system.

The Airborne Laser (ABL) weapon system will operate outside of the range of threat weapons but sufficiently close to enemy territory and at altitudes above the clouds where it can acquire and track missiles in boost flight, and then accurately point and fire the laser with such energy that the missile is destroyed.
ABL is the Boost Phase Intercept capability for the DoD's "Layered" Missile Defense System.

ABL is one key part of a Department of Defense approach to defending against ballistic missiles. The "layered" system uses different weapons to kill ballistic missiles at differing critical points in their lethal trajectories.


Airborne Laser:
* Early Engagement - destroys ballistic missiles in their boost phase of flight over launch area
* Cues and tracks targets - communicates with other joint theater assets for layered defense system
ABL Concept — Engagement:

Rapid and cost effective




Copyright : Boeing

Franco Lolan

find it interesting that they are targeting fuel, not guidance systems.

The Chap

Secondary effects are the domain of partical beams. "flash" shock on the skin of an ICBM (for eg) esp. in boost phase are an efficient way of minimising power requirements and thus reducing thermal etc. stress on optical systems attendent. Personally, I think that double burst is the way forward (one to at least punch a partial tunnel before the main beam.

Oh, and even with electron tunnelling partical weapons are only, realistically, going to have ABM functions in exo-atmospheric theatres. But they are too hungry for orbital deployment. Unless they use neutral anti matter beams. Not so likely. Unless the BMDO is getting a lot more funding. I mean a LOT.

__________________
Where's the bloody gin? An army marches on its liver, not its ruddy stomach.

Franco Lolan

[quote=Oh, and even with electron tunnelling partical weapons are only, realistically, going to have ABM functions in exo-atmospheric theatres. But they are too hungry for orbital deployment. Unless they use neutral anti matter beams. Not so likely. Unless the BMDO is getting a lot more funding. I mean a LOT. [/QUOTE]

isn't this designed to achieve atmospheric hits?

The Chap

[quote=Franco Lolan]Yes. That's my point. DEW beam propogation in a gaseous medium is determined by many factors. Most importantly, moisture, macro-micro turbulence and "pollutants" in combination with thermal effects. In less poncy terms, look at the optical effects of jet wash. And how far can one see through fog/smog?