Posted on 08/14/2009 10:46:14 PM PDT by gandalftb
EDWARDS AFB, CA - The Boeing Company and the US Missile Defense Agency successfully completed the Airborne Laser's (ABL) first in-flight test against an instrumented target missile, achieving a historic milestone.
During the test, the modified Boeing 747-400F used its infrared sensors to find a target missile launched from San Nicolas Island, Calif. The battle management system aboard ABL issued engagement and target location instructions to the beam control/fire control system, which acquired the target and fired its two solid-state illuminator lasers to track the target and measure atmospheric conditions.
ABL then fired a surrogate high-energy laser at the target, simulating a missile intercept. Instrumentation on the target verified that the surrogate high-energy laser hit the target.
"This test demonstrates that the Airborne Laser can fully engage an in-flight missile with its battle management and beam control/fire control systems," said Michael Rinn, Boeing vice president and ABL program director. "Pointing and focusing a laser beam on a target that is rocketing skyward at thousands of miles per hour is no easy task, but the Airborne Laser is uniquely able to do the job."
ABL will now undergo flight tests in which the aircraft will fire its high-energy laser, first into an onboard calorimeter, then through its beam control/fire control system.
The ABL team then will test the entire weapon system against in-flight missiles, culminating with ABL's first high-energy laser intercept test against a ballistic missile later this year.
ABL would deter potential adversaries and provide speed-of-light capability to destroy all classes of ballistic missiles in their boost phase of flight. Eliminating missiles in their boost phase would reduce the number of shots required by other elements of the layered ballistic missile defense system.
"ABL's revolutionary speed, mobility, precision and lethality would make it a great asset to America's warfighters," Rinn added.
(Excerpt) Read more at boeing.mediaroom.com ...
Within a year we will be able to deploy fully operational weapons grade lasers able to knock down any missile, hundreds of miles away in the boost phase. This is the first missile defense of its kind.
N Korea, Iran, whomever, their missiles will be useless. This is the game changer.
Time will tell if Obama would allow this system to be fully developed.
ping
The test managed to get a tagging laser to illuminate the test missile. How steadily is not stated.
Being able to illuminate a hostile missile would greatly help antimissile missiles to home in on it. This would probably be more practical than trying to burn the missile down with a laser from hundreds of miles away, particularly when weather makes the atmosphere almost opaque.
ABL 747 cutaway.
And they said it couldn’t be done!
You can fire a laser from any target as long it is enough power and has a tracking mirror. If you are firing from space you need a larger mirror. White Sands Missile Range has the High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility.
The ABL range is about 360 miles for liquid-fueled missiles, while the aircraft loiters at an altitude of 40,000ft. That covers all of N Korea and the outer 2/3 of Iran.
They tagged the missile.
Keeping enough laser on it steadily to burn it up, despite intervening clouds and any reflective/refractory coating on the missile itself, is another thing.
My information on the the Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser (ABL) weapons system is a megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser It is primarily designed as a missile defense system to destroy tactical ballistic missiles (TBMs), while in boost phase. The low-power lasers have been test-fired in flight, aimed at an airborne target board.In theory, the ABL could be used against hostile fighter aircraft, cruise missiles, or even low-earth-orbit satellites (see anti-satellite weapon). However, as they are not its intended target, the capability against them is unknown.
We’ll be shooting at 40,000 feet and weather won’t be as much an issue. Liquid fuel will be the easiest to knock down by hitting the big tanks. Solid-fuel knock down would be about half the maximum range.
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/doc_src/ABL_overview.pdf
Here is the Boeing Backrounder
Liquid-fuel tanks are obviously the easiest to light up. You’re right, there is no end to the available targets. Certainly we will be making major improvements in power and target aquisition.
I agree. The military applications of the new weapons is endless.
If well above clouds, that would work better to be sure.
I hope some hapless jet liner isn’t in the way, as they cruise at such altitudes.
Also, I wonder if bright plating all external surfaces of the missile that are not already refractory would be an effective countermeasure.
Imagine what could be smoked on the ground.
Are you telling me that they can’t simply coat the missile with a mirror like finish to reflect the laser?
I agree with you.I would say it could be used for ground targets. Just give the coordinates of the target an POOF!!! This is the perfect weapon for taking out targets that need to be taken care of.
Until some of the Axis of Evil achieve similar capacity... this could be worse than nukes because it would not generate any radioactive fallout to make subsequent ground based conquest harder. Think of a party like Iran or North Korea not nuking, but lasering targets in Washington.
Was my question too, though what we know as effective mirrors for optical light might be less effective for the infrared cranked out by carbon dioxide lasers.
The Chinese and the Russians have been working on this as an ASAT weapon for years in defiance of international treaty(ABM Treaty).The same treaties we signed back in 1972. It is rather recently that we have started working on this and achieved great strides. IMHO, we are making better weapon systems than the Russians and to a certain extent the Chinese. The Chinese or Russians have nothing like the ABL.The next world war will be in space using laser weapons.
No body panic at this successful test, Barry The Kenyan will kill this program too!
It doesn’t take long to burn through the very thin-skinned missiles and destroy their aerodynamic integrity/warhead controls/flight controls and electronics.
“Dumb” single-stage/gravity-ballistic missiles like the Palistinian’s Katuska’s have also been routinely destroyed since the early 2000’s by the THEL and other laser versions.
The lasers are actually chemically-powered by some “complex” H2OH (etc) reactions. You don’t use electric power to create the beam, just mix the chemicals. Given enough liquid in the 747 tanks, it means you can’t run out of “anti-missile missiles” .
While not mid-air refueled now, such a reload capability could be provided by specialist tankers.
Actually this is here to stay. I would expect missile tests from Vandenberg very soon.
True, a good mirror would reflect most of the energy. However, how are you going to make a "good mirror" out of a missile body? They have a strict weight budget, can't hang fragile glass or plexi based mirrors on it. A simple paint coating isn't going to do it. That will still absorb too high a percentage of the energy of the laser pulse - boom. Highly polished stainless or some other metal might reflect a fair amount of energy... But would it stay highly polished in the beam? The beam is going to vaporize everything in its path, clouds, moisture, anything that absorbs even a fraction of the energy will boil away. May even ionize the air some?
The laser may not even need to damage the missile. Just the superheating of the air on that side of the missile is going to disrupt the symmetry of the airflow around the vehicle. That alone may be enough to throw it off course, pitch/yaw it to too high of an angle of attack on the airflow, causing it to tear apart. Ballistic missiles pull some big Gs along the primary axis, but they generally do not pull many Gs turning or maneuvering, they just are not built for it like SAMs and Air-to-Air missiles.
During boost the missile structure is under tremendous forces, acceleration, aerodynamic drag (and heating), internal pressure on the fuel and oxidizer tanks, even more pressure if it is a solid fuel booster. You don't have to upset that system/structure much and it will simply tear itself apart. Generally even the smallest structural failure leads to catastrophic loss of the vehicle...
I agree with your assesment
The way the Army engineers discribed the results to me, the force of the laser is so strong it literally “punches” (distorts and blows through) the incoming missile - not “heat it up and melt the missile wall” like in James Bond movies.
Mirror-reflection surfaces don’t reflect enough energy to matter - the mirrored surface itself is destroyed.
Notably, one avantage that an airborne laser gets is that thermal bloom - the distortion of the cylinder of air between the laser and the target as the laser goes through the air - is minimized by the forward movement of the aircraft in the air. Ground based lasers lose some time between shots if several targets are in the same “tunnel” of air if they all come from the same launcher.
You really nailed it with this part: “The laser may not even need to damage the missile. Just the superheating of the air on that side of the missile is going to disrupt the symmetry of the airflow around the vehicle.”
All mirrors (even if feasible to attach) would do is INCREASE the heating of the air on that side of the missile by redirecting some of the energy back there.
The “they’ll just coat their missiles with mirrors” meme is a fallacy possited by the left to denigrate the technology in the eyes of a scientifically ignorant public. After all, the dollars “wasted” on actual national defense could be better spent buying votes...
He did a very good summation
FReepers are losing their edge. Here we are, 30 posts into this thread, and there’s no picture of Dr. Evil saying “just give me sharks with frickin’ laser beams, that’s all I ask”.
Put one up then
Then that would be taking away someone else’s thunder and they’d have to think of something witty to say in order to bump this thread.
"Okay people, all I'm asking for is a fleet of jumbo jets with laaassser beams on them. Is that so friggin' difficult?"
Cool.....
I can now say we have a real death-ray gun.....
I like to see that in action.
Atmospherics at +50K feet are quite a bit clearer than at sea level.
But not birds ... right? We wouldn't want to vaporize some birds to save the nation.
>> The Chinese or Russians have nothing like the ABL.
Not yet, but Hillary and/or Bill will take care of that detail on their next trip to China or NoKo.
We’re here! We’re here! We’re in the Buck Rogers age!
And the Animal Farm age.
“>> The Chinese or Russians have nothing like the ABL.
Not yet, but Hillary and/or Bill will take care of that detail on their next trip to China or NoKo.”
You’re right. That’s where Russia and China have gotten ALL their modern military technology.
Grin, why no, of course not. That's actually been the hold up of the entire program. They had to develop a combination of powerful airborne radars and sensitive IR and visual band sensors, use sophisticated data-fusion algorithms... All so they could detect any wildlife in the area that might be adversely affected by a discharge of the laser. Obviously the battle manager beam planning routines take this into account when determining shot-opportunities... :-)
And of course, since obama is all about transparency and being a good "world citizen" (except when it comes to birth certificates I guess)... If we were ever to put ABL into use in an operational scenario I'm sure he'd issue orders that would reflect his sensitivity to the world stage... "Hey NK, please warn your citizens we have an ABL aircraft orbiting 75 miles off your coast, due east of your missile field at {some unpronounceable name}. Notify your citizens that if they see a smoke trail of one of your missiles headed up, not to look up and avert their eyes - we don't want to hurt anyone."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574348822530004230.html
But will it lance a volcano?
Thank you.
This scientist/engineer was ALWAYS of the educated opinion that this could be done, and would be done in time. I believe it should have been accomplished sooner, but that is not the fault of Reagan, or others like me.
Guess which leader recently canceled this program.
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