The Missile Defense Agency is getting pumped for the coming lethal demonstration of its Airborne Laser (ABL) prototype against a threat-representative missile later this year. That’s right, Dr. Evil, a frikin’ laser beam!
The ABL was developed as part of the Ballistic Missile Defense System designed to protect the United States, its allies, and its deployed troops from a ballistic missile attack. Using two solid state lasers and a megawatt-class Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) housed aboard a modified Boeing 747-400 Freighter, the ABL mission is to detect, track, target, and destroy ballistic missiles shortly after launch during the boost-phase. Sounds complicated, expensive, and awesome.
Because it’s developed by a team of contractors from leading edge technology conglomerates including Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin, you’d expect the laser to be able to shoot down hostile fighter aircraft, cruise missiles, and hell, even low-earth-orbit satellites, right? While that may sound good in theory, the fact of the matter is, it can’t, for now at least. The ABL does not burn through or disintegrate its target, instead it heats the missile skin, thus weakening it and causing failure from high-speed flight stress.
Essentially, as the target missile clears cloud break, infrared sensors that have a 360-degree view around the aircraft detect the missile plume and guide a tracking laser to the missile that then tracks the hard body of the missile. Once detected, three low powered tracking lasers calculate missile course, speed, aimpoint, and air turbulence. Because air turbulence deflects and distorts the laser beam, the ABL adaptive optics uses the turbulence measurement to compensate for atmospheric errors. Finally, the main COIL laser, located in a turrent on the aircraft nose, fires for three to five seconds with enough energy to power a typical American home for more than an hour. The energy on the missile generates a crack in the missile and under pressure, the missile falls apart; it comes “unzipped” according to designers. This entire sequence begins and runs during the boost phase of the target that is within eight to twelve seconds.
So what’s next, sharks with laser beams attached to their frikin’ heads? Considering the fact that the MDA has been pumping $420 million into the project every year for the last eight years, we can be sure there is more technology to come. The only real obstacle at this point for the billion dollar plane is the fact that the Air Force hasn’t bought a single plane in almost twenty years on account of all our enemies being too broke to expand a threat from the skies. So what now?
During last summers Washington Roundtable on Science and Public Policy, a government think-tank that examines scientific questions from The George Marshall Institute in Washington, the commander of the Airborne Laser Program, Colonel Robert McMurry, expressed his view on this small speed bump.
“If you know somebody who has put a megawatt class laser into a 747 and shot down a boosting missile, send him over!” he said during the conference. “It hasn’t been done; it is a first-of-a-kind activity.”
McMurry and other supporters of the project are convinced that the sheer ingenuity behind the ABL technology is enough to spark interests from government buyers, and change the face of warfare forever. After the SCUD bombardment during Desert Storm, and the proliferation of ballistic missiles around the world from North Korea to Iran and Syria, it is apparent that a strong defense against this kind of attack is in high demand, now that ballistic missiles are more lethal than ever before with chemical and biological weapons attached to them.
Also in its favor are the small kicks and mobility benefits of such a powerful machine. Attached to a plane, the laser can literally fly to any hotspot in the world within hours of when a crisis starts, cutting out any unnecessary established basing rights that usually slow mobilization efforts. Also, since the airplane is refuelable by air, it can stay airborne and go anyplace fairly quickly.
Another benefit is the cost issue. Instead of launching multi-million dollar missiles in retaliation to an attack, the laser can fire up to twenty shots depending on the threat on a full tank of laser fuel (which is almost the same as rocket propellant) at a mere sixty thousand per shot. But the best part about shooting a missile down during boost phase is the fact that when it breaks apart it falls right back to where it came from, which may coerce the enemy from unleashing a second wave.
While the range of the weapon has remained classified, the fact remains that regardless of how far it shoots, there is no inherent self-protection specifically against a laser threat. With all of these facts put together, you have a one of a kind integrated weapon system that will tighten the grip in modern warfare for whatever country wields its power.
If the ABL becomes integrated into the American Military forces, an expected seven planes would be bought. The common argument is two aircraft to cover an orbit and for every pair of orbits a spare aircraft, so you end up with about five to cover two orbits on a 24/7 basis. If the threat representative test is successful this year, sources claim that by the end of the year the U.S. commander in Korea is going to be asking for the ABL to be built into the war plan. Until then, the science fiction of it all will continue to become reality.
“There are a number of things that folks have said, such as this is too hard to do…that we are not going to be able to track it (target missile), we are not going to be able to provide the kind of control mechanisms needed to point this beam accurately and to put energy on a missile in an effective way,” continued McMurry. “What I can tell you is that step by step we have proven those statements incorrect and proven that we can do this and that the system has demonstrated every step of the sequence except the final ‘can we shoot it down?’ So that is where we are.”
While no official date has been released for the lethal demonstration, reports from sources indicate the test to be held sometime in August of this year.
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