AIRBORNE LASER IN TROUBLE AGAIN

The star-​​crossed Airborne Laser pro­gram could be headed for a big fund­ing cut, and maybe even elim­i­na­tion, Aviation Week reports.
Since the 80’s, the U.S. mil­i­tary has toyed with putting a chem­i­cal laser on board a com­mer­cial jumbo jet, and using that plane to defend against enemy mis­sile attacks. But putting that idea into action has been beyond dif­fi­cult. Keeping the Airborne Laser’s weight down has been a big, fat chal­lenge — espe­cially with 1,200 gal­lons of chem­i­cals needed to fire the laser. Test flights have been pushed back, over and over again.
Now, Aviation Week says, the Defense Department is look­ing to restruc­ture the pro­gram, and pare back its bud­get. Nearly $600 mil­lion is sup­posed to be poured into the Airborne Laser this fis­cal year.
“The option of can­celling the pro­gram out­right” has been raised by Pentagon plan­ners. But the “pre­vail­ing view,” so far, is to keep the Airborne Laser’s near-​​term work intact, and scale back more future-​​facing efforts.
As Aviation Week notes, “The Pentagon has already awarded Boeing a con­tact for design work on a sec­ond 747-​​400F that would be con­verted into a laser car­rier. But the actual air­craft order may be delayed.”

January 5th, 2004 | Lasers and Ray Guns | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.