attack at the speed of light - air force magazine › pdf › magazinearchive › documents … ·...

ITHIN two years, theAir Force will at-tempt to shoot down

a ballistic missile with a laser beam.In about the same amount of time,the Army expects to be well on itsway to fielding a vehicle system of-fering laser defense against rockets,artillery rounds, and cruise missiles,while the Navy will be trying outsimilar defenses for its ships at sea.Gunships will be flying with experi-

mental tactical lasers by mid-decade,and by the end of the decade, fighteraircraft with laser pods or turretscould be in test flights.

The age of laser weapons has nearlyarrived.

When the Administration unveilsits Fiscal 2004 budget for the Penta-gon in the next few months, expectto see significant increases in moneyto support near-term deployment oflaser systems, some of which will be

Attack at the Speed of LightBy John A. Tirpak, Executive Editor

Soon, US combat forces will begin to field lasers as weapons.

field operational before 2010. Ex-pect also to see substantial increasesin science and technology fundingfor basic laser research that couldenable whole new classes of smalllaser systems with tactically signifi-cant power before 2020.

No science fiction here: Lasers asweapons are in the final stages ofdevelopment, and plans for their in-tegration into combat forces are pro-ceeding.

“We’ve spent 25 to 30 years de-veloping the technology,” said Col.Ellen M. Pawlikowski, USAF’s pro-gram director for the Airborne La-ser. “Now is the time for the engi-neers to take what those smartphysicists and scientists have doneand put it in the field.”

In the mid–1990s when the AirForce decided to proceed with theAirborne Laser, the other servicessaw lasers as still in the embryonic

stage: good for targeting weaponsand as range finders but with littlenear-term potential as destructiveweapons in themselves. That haschanged.

The services now expect lasers tobecome a class of weapon able todeliver a quantum leap in capability,epitomizing the Pentagon buzzword“transformational.”

A Defense Science Board taskforce conducted a comprehensive

USAF’s Airborne Laser (at left) on its maiden flight last July, was the catalystfor military laser development. Above, the YAL-1A, as it appears in its USAFlivery.

W

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AIR FORCE Magazine / December 200228

review of existing high energy laserprograms to determine their prom-ise, the technical challenges theyfaced, and realistic prospects for theirfielding. The conclusion of the taskforce: Laser technologies have ma-tured to the point that a family ofapplications is feasible before 2020.

Lasers offer “speed-of-light attack,unique damage mechanisms, greatlyenhanced multitarget engagement,and deep magazines, ... low cost pershot (or per kill), and reduced logis-tics footprint,” said the task force inits 230-page report, published inAugust 2001.

Besides instantaneous attack ca-pacity, a practically unlimited num-ber of inexpensive shots, and theability to switch targets rapidly, la-sers can be tuned to the level ofdestruction desired—from a little toa lot. Switching lasers for, say, bombsor missiles would also expand therange and time on station of the plat-form using them. With no heavy ord-nance to carry, since light—the me-dium of destruction—is weightless,aircraft could go farther on the sameamount of fuel.

Such weapons offer the US a unique“technological advantage,” one inwhich the American military is wellahead of any competitor, accordingto the task force.

The DSB group strongly recom-mended a funding increase of $150million a year to aggressively pur-sue laser technology for both near-term systems and basic research that

would enable more widespread ap-plications over the next 20 years.

Anthony J. Tether, the head of theDefense Advanced Research ProjectsAgency, agrees that the enablingscience of laser weaponry is well inhand.

Tether, in a roundtable discussionwith reporters in October, acknowl-edged that laser weapons are nolonger a futuristic technology butone that is being mainstreamed withthe armed services. He pointed outthat DARPA began working on la-sers in the early 1970s and is poisedto advance the technology even fur-ther.

Tether said efforts are under wayto “really allow us to increase theaverage power output of lasers” andto package them more compactly.Packaging lasers into a size smallenough “that a helicopter might beable to carry it” has drawn Armyinterest, said Tether, since such alaser—in the hundreds of kilowattsclass—would be capable of tremen-dous heating of an object miles away.

“It’ll be a big deal,” he said. Thecapability is probably five or sixyears away, but “the Army is so ex-cited about it, they want us to sign upto a [Memorandum of Agreement]right now,” said Tether.

The CatalystThe Airborne Laser program was

a major catalyst driving all the ser-vices to get involved in laser weap-onry, according to Col. Mark Neice,

chief of the Laser Division at the AirForce Research Lab’s Directed En-ergy Directorate, Kirtland AFB, N.M.

“That really focused people onlooking at directed energy across the[defense] community and [at] vari-ous applications, both strategic andtactical,” Neice said. “That hasspawned a lot of the other work we’redoing right now in laser develop-ment.”

Deformable optics—a key break-through in the ABL program—is oneof the chief technological innova-tions that has made laser weaponspossible. The use of deformable op-tics—a mirror whose face can bealtered hundreds of times per secondto correct for turbulence in the air—enables the laser emitter to hold asteady, high-quality laser beam on atarget, despite the natural air turbu-lence between the laser emitter andthe target.

Beam control systems and specialoptical coatings have also played animportant role in putting, as Pawli-kowski said, “photons on target.”

There are three kinds of lasersbeing prepared for combat duty:chemical, electric, and free-electronlasers.

Chemical lasers—those whoseenergy comes from the mixing ofchemicals, producing a high energyeffect—are in hand now and will bethe first combat lasers deployed. TheAirborne Laser uses a chemical la-ser, as does the Army’s Tactical HighEnergy Laser (a ground-based sys-tem for use against short-range rock-ets). Another new chemical system,the Advanced Tactical Laser, willgo on AC-130–style gunships.

Chemical lasers offer very highpower—in the megawatt range. Adrawback is that they require largeplatforms to haul the large quantityof chemicals needed and the lasermodules themselves, as well as thebeam control mechanism. The Air-borne Laser platform is a speciallyconfigured 747 widebody jetliner.The Army’s THEL currently requiresthree vehicles the size of semitrail-ers, although it is described as “trans-portable.” The Advanced TacticalLaser will be housed in a wheeledmodule that can be loaded into thecargo bay of a C-130–type aircraft.

Electric, or solid-state, lasers,use electricity as their power source.To be small enough to be useful forcombat operations, they would be

The Air Force is developing another chemical laser system—the AdvancedTactical Laser—to be installed in the cargo bay of C-130s, such as this AC-130gunship.

AIR FORCE Magazine / December 2002 29

limited to about 25 kilowatts. How-ever, Neice said AFRL has set a goalof five years to develop a 100-kilo-watt solid-state laser.

The Air Force has already identi-fied its first potential platform for anelectric laser—the F-35 Joint StrikeFighter.

The research lab struck an agree-ment with Lockheed Martin to ex-plore the possibility for the F-35,although the agreement could ex-tend to other fighters. Neice said theservice chose the F-35 initially be-cause both it and the electric laserare still being defined.

“We are looking at this in terms oftechnology insertion,” he said. “Iwould love to see it as a Spiral 1”system, or one that would appear onthe first F-35s. He admitted it’s toosoon to tell if that will happen. Themore likely timing for a directedenergy weapon on that aircraft willbe in Spiral 2 or Spiral 3, said Neice.

Industry officials are even look-ing beyond fighters now in devel-opment. They have a new class of“fotofighter”—small combat jetsthat would employ laser weaponsexclusively—already on the draw-ing boards.

Fighter aircraft make ideal plat-forms for solid-state lasers becausefighter engines can produce hugeamounts of electricity as a by-prod-uct of producing huge amounts ofthrust.

For the F-35, Lockheed Martin isconsidering either an internal con-figuration with the laser beam di-rected through ports around the pe-rimeter of the airplane, a belly turret,or a pod carried in the weapons bay.

The goal is to develop an “effi-cient packaging of a laser in the kilo-watt class,” Neice said. “It could bea chemical laser, it could be a gaslaser, it could a solid-state laser. Wetend to lean toward the solid-statelaser in that application because thereis a big empty shaft bay” in the F-35that could house a laser weapon sys-tem. Also, the engine “produces27,000 shaft horsepower,” he said,adding, “And that is a tremendouselectrical generating device.”

In early versions, these fighter-mounted lasers would be used tospoof or blind incoming missiles,especially those that are heat-seek-ing or optically guided. Offensively,they could be used against anotherfighter’s vulnerable spots.

For example, Neice explained,“We could target specific items onan airborne platform to heat up, suchas fuel tanks, missiles, flight con-trols, those types of things, that wouldrender the aircraft incapable of con-tinuing in the fight.”

“We would have the ability to reachout and touch [an aircraft] at a sig-nificant distance,” he said, notingthat a fighter-sized laser would achievea hit anywhere between 30 miles and155 miles away. The range of laserswould be affected by weather condi-tions and the presence of obscurants,such as smoke or airborne dust.

Neice said the Air Force ResearchLab has modified F-16 simulators atthe Theater Air Command and Con-trol Facility, also at Kirtland, to be-gin familiarizing fighter pilots withthe capabilities of lasers.

“We’ve been exposing the opera-tional F-16 fighter pilots to the capa-bilities of directed energy,” he ex-plained. “One of the efforts I’m tryingto work right now is to get that in-cluded into the curriculum out at thefighter weapons school [at NellisAFB, Nev.], where I can get America’sbest and brightest fighter pilots look-ing at these capabilities and thenhelping to develop a concept of op-erations for use of directed energyweapons in a tactical fighter appli-cation.”

Those pilots who have used thelaser-capable F-16 simulators are“very excited ... when they realizethat this capability is something

which is within the realm of possi-bility in 10 years,” he reported, add-ing, “The time to work on tactics andtechniques is right now.” He wantstoday’s young fighter pilots to “growup with it a little bit” because thosein the fighter weapons school nowwill be the commanders when thesystem becomes operational.

“Those are the kinds of guys weneed to get energized and enthusedon it, so that when that capabilitycomes to them, they’ll know how touse it,” he said.

The third type laser system—free-electron lasers—might be the “darkhorse” technology that could be thecompact laser weapon of the future,according to the DSB panel. Free-electron lasers use superconductingradio-frequency accelerators to cre-ate a tunable beam of electrons. Rapidadvancement in superconductivitymay make free-electron lasers com-petitive with or superior to electric,or solid-state, lasers as the technol-ogy progresses.

Pawlikowski observed, however,that there are no huge breakthroughsin laser technology expected in thenext few years. “I think that lasertechnology is moving quickly butnot at a breakthrough speed at thispoint,” she said. The technology isundergoing incremental improve-ments as scientists and engineersrefine the state of the art.

A “dramatic breakthrough” in theChemical Oxygen–Iodide Laser, orCOIL, at the heart of the ABL sys-

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is USAF’s first choice for a potential electriclaser weapon system platform. Fighters are ideal for an electric laser becausethey produce huge amounts of energy as a by-product of producing thrust.


tem, might come in the form of agas-phase laser, but “I would con-sider that five to eight years downthe road,” she added. (A gas-phaseversion of an iodine laser wouldemploy chemical gases—lighter andeasier to transport, maintain, andstore than COIL liquids, one of whichneeds constant refrigeration.)

The Aim of the ABLThe ABL program was launched

as a way to shoot down Theater Bal-listic Missiles while still in the boostphase of their flight. The idea is tospot and track the missile and focusa high energy laser on its skin, weak-ening it enough that the dynamicforces of flight cause it to ruptureand explode.

The debris of the exploded mis-sile—and its warhead—would fallback on the nation that launched theweapon.

The ABL is slated to shoot down aScud–type missile during 2004,Pawlikowski noted. The schedule istight, but she believes the programwill get there in time. The ABL air-craft made test flights last summer,with the large nose turret that willhouse the system optics but withoutthe laser system or optics onboard.Those will be brought on and inte-grated over the course of the nexttwo years.

The ABL system is being assembledin components, which Pawlikowskisaid are being built and tested sepa-rately before they are integrated on

A large ball turret on the nose of the Airborne Laser will house the systemoptics. The full-up laser will be installed in the airplane in early 2004. Testshots against a Scud–type target are scheduled for summer 2004.

the airplane. She said the “first suc-cessful, full-up test of a laser mod-ule” took place in January.

“We got 118 percent of the powerwe expected out of it,” she reported,“so it was a very successful test.”

The ABL is being integrated atEdwards AFB, Calif., which Pawli-kowski said is rapidly becoming thecenter of the universe for ABL andits associated efforts. It is at Edwardsthat the pieces will all come to-gether, including support systemslike chemical storage and drainingfacilities.

The full-up laser will be installedin the airplane in early 2004 andtest-fired on the ground at Edwards,Pawlikowski said. Test flights willbegin soon after. During the summerof 2004, test shots will be madeagainst a Scud–like, instrumentedtarget, suspended from a balloon,followed by additional tests to dem-onstrate tracking ability. If all goesas planned, the ABL will interceptits first missile before the scheduleddate of Dec. 31, 2004.

Right now, the ABL is slated tomake its first true intercept of aballistic missile by the end of 2004.However, that date may slip, ac-cording to Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Ka-dish, director of the Missile De-fense Agency.

“This is crunch time for the ABL,”Kadish said at an October discus-sion with defense writers in Wash-ington, D.C. “Now all the hardwareis getting delivered. And when hard-

ware gets delivered, there are all ofthe inevitable problems; you getthings not working as expected.”

Kadish said he won’t have highconfidence of a TBM shootdown bythe end of 2004 until the all-up ABLaircraft has all its parts, is fully inte-grated, and starts shooting its lasernext spring.

He quickly added, though, thatwhile meeting the schedule is a chal-lenge, “the good news here is ...there will be a lot of people showingup at Edwards Air Force Base inPalmdale [Calif.] in the next fewdays to work intensely on putting[the ABL] together.”

Although initially encouraged tobroaden the application of the ABLto other target sets, such as cruisemissiles, the program is no longerbeing asked to do so, Pawlikowskireported.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. JohnP. Jumper “definitely sees the po-tential of directed energy weaponsand has told me repeatedly how im-portant this program is to the futureof directed energy and the potentialof using this airplane for lots of otherthings,” Pawlikowski said. “But Ibelieve that the current Air Forceposition is, ‘Let’s get that first mis-sion down, and then we’ll look at theothers,’ ” she said.

When DOD’s Missile DefenseAgency took over the ABL programlast year, the focus of the programchanged, said Pawlikowski. ABL isseen now as part of national missiledefense, not just theater missile de-fense, which will eventually havestrong implications for the numberof aircraft built and how they aredeployed.

“We are no longer a single-weaponsystem that essentially stands alone,”she said. “We are part ... of a layeredapproach to missile defense. ...Weare the air-based, boost-phase com-ponent.”

The Bush Administration requesteda 25 percent increase in funding forABL in the Fiscal 2003 budget. Pen-tagon officials said such an amountwould help keep the program on trackafter funding volatility in previousyears. The program is expected tocost $11 billion overall and produceseven operational airplanes in 2010.

Other Potential Combat LasersAnother Air Force chemical laser

venture is the Advanced Tactical

AIR FORCE Magazine / December 2002 31

On Nov. 5, the THEL chemical laser system shot down an artillery shell in a testover White Sands Missile Range, N.M. Army officials said the event was the firstsuch shootdown and marked a paradigm shift in defensive capabilities.

Laser, which might appear on AC-130 gunships in just a few years.

“We are building a palletized sys-tem that will be mounted inside of aC-130,” Neice said. How the beamwould be fired—through an apertureor turret—has yet to be decided.

“We have a test C-130 at Eglin[AFB, Fla.],” he said. “Right nowwe’re looking at integration of thissystem in the 2005 time frame andthen flight test in the 2006 timeframe.”

The program will focus on im-proving beam quality, reducing thesize of the chemical laser, and aquick transition to the field.

Neice said the stated goal fromAir Force Special Operations Com-mand is to be able to attack bothvehicles and standing structures.“What we’re looking for is an abil-ity to stop a vehicle from moving,... to prevent it from continuing withits intended purpose,” he said. “Thisis not [about] blowing up a build-ing.”

Against fixed structures, the lasermight be used to disable a radio tower,dish antenna, or other building fea-ture to disrupt it from functioning,not to destroy the edifice itself. Amoving vehicle might be stopped“either by overheating the engine orburning a hole in the engine—anynumber of means of stopping thevehicle,” Neice explained.

AFRL’s part of the effort is fundedat roughly $10 million over the nextfour years, he added.

The Army, in cooperation withIsrael, has developed THEL as ameans of defending against rock-ets—specifically, the Katyusha rock-ets that Palestinian guerillas haveused to attack border towns in Israel.The system, powered by a chemicallaser, has succeeded in shooting down25 Katyushas in experiments. In earlyNovember, THEL shot down an in-bound artillery shell.

THEL currently consists of threevehicles. One carries the laser fuel,one houses the tracking and guid-ance system, and another houses thelaser and beam control gear. The

Army is hoping to scale the systemdown to something comparable tothe Patriot missile defense system,which consists of smaller separatevehicles for tracking radar and theactual missile launchers.

In 2003, the THEL program willfocus on making the equipment suit-able for movement by transport air-craft, said a spokesman for TRW,which is building the system, to beknown as Mobile THEL, or MTHEL.A version, for use only by the USArmy, could be fielded in about 2007.

According to Patrick P. Caruana,TRW vice president and former vicecommander of Air Force Space Com-mand, the classes of threats MTHELcould be used against has been broad-ened. “We are doing the analysisassociated with artillery rounds, ...[Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles],and also cruise missiles,” he said.

The Navy, which briefly pursuedhigh energy lasers as potential weap-ons during the days of the StrategicDefense Initiative, has shown re-newed interest this past year. InMarch, Vice Adm. Dennis V. McGinn,the service’s requirements and pro-grams chief, outlined a new conceptof operations that will look at highenergy lasers as a means to defendagainst anti-ship cruise missiles andUCAVs.

A Pentagon official said the Navyelected to “jump back in” because itwas apparent that technology wasadvanced enough to make “work-able systems that would be suitable

The Army’s Tactical High Energy Laser is technically transportable butcomprises three vehicles the size of semitrailers. A version suitable formovement by a C-130–sized aircraft could be fielded in about 2007.


for the maritime environment.” Atthe same time, Navy concerns aboutship vulnerability to a mass attack ofcruise missiles demanded a responseother than Gatling guns and otheranti-missile technologies.

The Navy is also evaluating la-ser systems for use by surfaced sub-marines. Since nuclear submarineshave abundant onboard electricalpower, solid-state lasers are favoredover chemical lasers, the by-prod-uct of which—spent chemicals—would have to be stored until thesubmarine could put back into port.The advantage of using lasers onboard submarines is that they are amunition that would be stealthy,Navy officials reported.

“You can surface, hit a target milesaway with a laser, and no one knowsyou were ever there,” a Pentagonofficial observed. Ideal would be asystem that could be fitted on thesub’s conning tower or periscope, soonly a fraction of the vessel wouldhave to be above the waterline toconduct an attack.

The possible naval applicationsare varied. Ship- and sub-based la-sers could breach the skin of an en-emy vessel at the waterline, blind itsoptics, or disable its communica-tions by damaging antennas.

Space Lasers and BeyondOne area that will not see lasers

deployed anytime soon is space.Congress drastically cut funding forthe Space Based Laser in the Fiscal

2003 budget, and the Bush Adminis-tration has elected not to try to pur-sue the effort for now.

The SBL program was to producean experimental capability around2012 but perished from a combina-tion of politics, shifting treaty reali-ties, and technical challenges relatedto the system. The experiment wouldhave cost “billions to put up, and itwould not have offered an opera-tional capability,” according to anindustry official closely associatedwith the effort.

“Also, it was conceived at a timewhen we were still following theABM treaty, ... and there were oppo-nents in Congress who wanted some-thing in exchange for the increasesin other parts of the defense programlast year,” he said.

However, the SBL project alsofaced some huge technical chal-lenges. In its report, the DSB panelsaid the system envisioned for even-tual operational use—a large chemi-cal laser—was expected to weigh inat 80,000 pounds and require a fair-ing more than 26.4 feet in diameter.The panel observed that no existingrocket could lift such a payload, noris one even on the books.

Moreover, the SBL would haveneeded a five- to eightfold increasein power over the proposed experi-mental version to be operationallyuseful against ballistic missiles. Giventhe long list of engineering break-throughs necessary to make an op-erational system workable by 2020,

The ABL program gained funding at the expense of the Space Based Lasereffort, now seen as unlikely to produce an operational system within twodecades. Officials say the technology is still promising, though.

the DSB rated the SBL a “high risk”project.

Congress shifted some $30 mil-lion from the SBL to the ABL in theFiscal 2003 budget.

Basing lasers in space holds a lotof appeal because it “solves a lot ofthe geography problem that we face,”according to Kadish.

However, “as we looked at ourpriorities and the difficulties of SpaceBased Laser activity, we decided—collectively with the Congress—thatwe should put it at the technologystage and not even do the experi-ment that we were planning,” he said.

In today’s missile defense priori-ties, “Space Based Laser is a ... verypromising technology effort,” Kadishasserted. “We will do the technol-ogy as aggressively as we can, but itwon’t be focused on putting an ex-periment in space in the near term.”

He reported that the program of-fice for what had been termed the“Integrated Space-Based Experiment”has been disbanded, and its constitu-ent elements will be consolidatedunder the Airborne Laser project.

Space applications for lasers arenot confined to lasers actually inspace, however. The Air Force Re-search Lab is considering lofting intoorbit mirrors that could reflect thelight of a laser fired from the groundor air toward targets either in spaceor within the atmosphere. The pro-gram is called Evolutionary Aero-space Global Laser Engagement Sys-tem.

A handheld “death ray” laser willlikely not be available to US troopsin the foreseeable future, but theadvent of smaller and more power-ful laser weapons will certainly worka change in how US forces operate.

For the coming decade, “I reallysee laser weapons becoming trulytransformational,” said Caruana.“We’re talking about operations atthe speed of light, ... about precisionin a very focused application of en-ergy, which I believe will give thebattlefield commanders opportuni-ties to be very selective in how andwhat they target.”

Right now, Caruana said, the US“has the right kind of [laser] tech-nology development going.”

“If we stay on that continuum,”what is now the state of the art in thelaboratory will become “a little bitmore routine” in day-to-day opera-tions, he said. ■

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