RAY GUN FUTURE MELTING?

Earlier this year, at a DC con­fer­ence on laser weapons, Brigadier General Philip Coker, with the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, told the assem­bled sci­en­tists and defense con­trac­tors that they were on a 12-​​month dead­line.
You guys have been tin­ker­ing around with lasers for decades, he said, with­out a whole lot of fund­ing or a whole lot of suc­cess. But if you come up with a ray gun that can pro­tect American troops in Iraq from mor­tar attacks within the next year, “I will buy it.” And then, the money will rush for all sorts of so-​​called “directed energy” weapons.
But it looks like that dead­line won’t be hit. Because “U.S. Army offi­cials so far have balked at deploy­ing an exper­i­men­tal laser weapon” that’s the most promis­ing can­di­date for ful­fill­ing Coker’s needs, Reuters says.

“We’ve talked to them about it,” said Art Stephenson, a vice pres­i­dent at Northrop Grumman Corp., which built the Tactical High-​​Energy Laser, or THEL.
THEL, a short-​​range air defense sys­tem made up of sev­eral com­po­nents, is the laser weapon clos­est to pos­si­ble use in the field. It ties an advanced radar that detects and tracks incom­ing rock­ets to a chemically-​​generated high-​​power beam that destroys them. The system’s devel­op­ment was jointly funded by the U.S. Army and the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
Army offi­cers had lots of ques­tions about logis­tics and safety, Stephenson told reporters…
“And there are answers to all those ques­tions that alle­vi­ate those con­cerns,” he said. “It’s up to the mil­i­tary to decide how they want to use this capa­bil­ity.“
Army offi­cials involved in the mat­ter would not be avail­able for com­ment until Thursday, said Nancy Ray, an Army spokes­woman.
In tests at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, THEL has destroyed 46 tar­gets in flight, includ­ing mor­tar rounds fired singly and in salvos, artillery shells and rock­ets, Northrop offi­cials said. A tar­get is zapped by the real-​​life equiv­a­lent of a Star Trek-​​like beam of light. The highly focused beam, gen­er­ated by a mix of hydro­gen flu­o­ride and deu­terium flu­o­ride, focuses enough energy to heat the tar­get until it explodes in mid-​​air.
Stephenson, vice pres­i­dent of Northrop’s new “Directed Energy Systems” busi­ness area, said the Army pulled the plug late last year on plans to develop a mobile ver­sion of THEL on the grounds it would be too bulky.
Since then, Los Angeles-​​based Northrop has designed a second-​​generation, “relo­cat­able” sys­tem that’s about one-​​quarter the size of the one now at White Sands, New Mexico, with the same capa­bil­ity, he said.
The “relo­cat­able” sys­tem could be deployed within two years at about $25 mil­lion apiece from the 30th unit if the Army were to buy that many of them, he said.

So far, that’s not in the cards.

May 5th, 2005 | Lasers and Ray Guns | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.