The headline is pretty spooky: “Administration Conducting Research Into Laser Weapon.” And the meat of the story, on the Starfire Optical Range’s plan to start lighting up satellites, can probably best be described as:
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! DEATH RAY!!!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!
Check it out:
The Bush administration is seeking to develop a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would use beams of concentrated light to destroy enemy satellites in orbit.
The largely secret project, parts of which have been made public through Air Force budget documents submitted to Congress in February, is part of a wide-ranging effort to develop space weapons, both defensive and offensive
The laser research would take advantage of an optical technique that uses sensors, computers and flexible mirrors to counteract the atmospheric turbulence that seems to make stars twinkle.
The weapon would essentially reverse that process, shooting focused beams of light upward with great clarity and force.
Which is all true to a point. Gimme a sec to explain.
The Starfire range relies on some of the only useful technology to emerge from the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or Star Wars. As Ann Finkbeiner tells the story, in the early 1980s, Air Force scientists looked into the question of correcting for atmospheric turbulence to image Soviet spy satellites. They had the idea that to shine a laser against a layer of sodium in the mesosphere (essentially the last layer of the earth’s atmosphere) in order to measure the distortion from the ground up.
Measuring the atmospheric distortion allows a scientist to deform her telescope producing a clear picture. It’s called adaptive optics. Think of it as looking at yourself in a funhouse mirror with glasses that are just as screwy, but precisely so in order to offset the effect of the mirror. (The pretty picture accompanying the NYT story does a good job of explaining.)
The Starfire Optical Range uses adaptive optics, mostly, to take pretty pictures of stars and the like (click here for a little astro-porn from SOR). But the same skill-set is also damn handy if you want to fire a laser through the atmosphere to fry a satellite or ballistic missile.
Hence, our little problem here.
So, am I little bothered that the Air Force is funding “atmospheric compensation/beam control experiments for application including antisatellite weapons”? Yup. “Precision aimpoint stabilization through turbulence”? That can’t be good. Ditto placing the whole thing under “Advanced Weapons Technology.” Unless UBL is hanging out on a space station, I can think of better ways to use the cash.
On the other hand, the NYT’s science scribe, Bill Broad, isn’t being fair when he calls the research a “largely secret project”, accuses the Bush Administration of “seeking to develop a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would use beams of concentrated light to destroy enemy satellites in orbit” or relegates the useful applications of adaptive optics to a couple of paragraphs near the end of the story.
This is important technology research, largely conducted in the open. As Broad notes, “previously, the laser work resided in a budget category that paid for a wide variety of space efforts.” What’s happened here, mostly, is an accounting shift. Adaptive optics can be used for good or ill, depending on our collective wisdom as a people. There is no policy fix for stupid.
Broad is being particularly unfair to both the Air Force and critics of this particular experiment, like me, by giving the last word to an activist group warning that, if the experiment is conducted, “the barrier to weapons in space will have been destroyed.“
I’d rather the Air Force not do the experiment, but this is not a death ray. In fact, other than some vague, unfocused research, the military isn’t really in the death ray business anymore. Well, there is the Airborne Laser, but that is a whole other story.
– Jeffrey Lewis
UPDATE 4:01 PM: You wanna talk real laser weapons? some of the most interesting directed energy work was outlined in Noah’s article in Popular Science, “Attack at the Speed of Light,” which showcases efforts by two erstwhile SDI scientsists, now competing to build much smaller lasers to tackle practical missions like shooting down mortars.
UPDATE 6:24 PM: For a completely different take, check out this paper from the Center for Defense Information.
UPDATE 05/04/06 10:42 AM: John Fleck has a great follow-up to the Starfire flap in today’s Albuquerque Journal.
Hitchens explained that there long has been a sort of “gentleman’s agreement” among nations not to mess with one another’s satellites.
The reason is rooted in the complex calculus of nuclear deterrence. A nation with the ability to watch for enemy missile launches is less likely to accidentally start a nuclear war, she explained…
Vansuch said next year’s proposed test would be the first time the Starfire technology has been used to focus an outgoing laser.
The test would be no death ray, but rather a very low power experiment. “The basic physics is what we’re after,” Vansuch said.
(Big ups: Larry Ahrens)
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
“Unless UBL is hanging out on a space station, I can think of better ways to use the cash.”
Couldn’t this technology be used to defend against ballistic missiles? Would you prefer to a) have a lasar defense against nuclear armed ballistic missles, b) take preemptive action against erratic countries developing nuclear armed ballistic missles like North Korea, and Iran, or c) allow such countries to attack the US and then have the US retaliate with our own NBM’s?
If it were up to me I’d choose choice to have a lasar defense, UBL is not the only one making threats and is by far the least dangerous of those making threats.
Chineese officials have threatened to use nuclear weapons if the US defends Tiwan against China.
I don’t see how this would work. You fire the laser up through the atmosphere, detecting distortion. With a lens, you can deform the lense to correct for the distortion, and get a clear picture, but how do you deform a laser beam to correct for the distortion??? Doesn’t make sense.
China has never made a nuclear threat, only a threat of retaliation if we support their push for independence.
Ground-based lasers are not a good way to defend against ballistic missiles. Reentry vehicles are relatively tough because they are designed to withstand high temperatures. Satellites are fragile. Plus, a reentering warhead is going to be surrounded by a plasma sheath as it ionizes the atmosphere.
You guys need to read Doug Beason’s book “The E-Bomb”, which describes the Air Force’s long-standing work on directed-energy weapons. Beason was, I think, part of the team that developed some of these weapons. Nothing classified in the book, which is remarkable in view of the level of detail that is in the book.
The military isn’t in the “death ray” business anymore?
You do realize that work is proceeding all over the place towards tactical battlefield lasers?
Yes, that means that we’ll eventually see laser cannons in space. But first, we’ll see them down here, where they’re rather useful at picking, say, bin Laden out of a crowd without killing anyone else.
They also would do a number on any conventional mass-based army.
In 1996, General Xiong said that the United States would not act to defend Taiwan against a People’s Republic invasion because “Americans care more about Los Angeles than Taipei”. This was not a threat of retalliation if we supported Taiwanese independence, but a threat of nuclear attack if we didn’t acquiesce to an aggresive war on the part of the People’s Republic.
“So, am I little bothered that the Air Force is funding “atmospheric compensation/beam control experiments for application including antisatellite weapons”? Yup. ”
Why? The Air Force has been looking at the Counter-Space mission for some time now. Sure, it’s not of notable _immediate_ use, but the next time that we face a peer competitor, being able to take out their satellites would be a _very_ good thing.
What, exactly, is the objection to this?
Well, it is a waste if you consider RIFs the only US opponent, for eternity.
Most likely wanted to counter the French-backed Galileo GPS system. It was designed to operate on the same parameters that the US military system was, preventing the US forces from jamming it without losing our own GPS systems.
This means that the French are trying to be able to sell weapons designed to shoot at US forces.
And end the embargo against selling NATO weapons to the Chinese (although other bidders like OBL are welcome to put their orders in).
I thought the Air Force had a missle weapon, carried by the F-15, that could shoot down satellites… Was that only for low-orbit birds?
With SDI one concept was an X-Ray laser. The interesting thing is that once you announce you are working on such a weapon, X-Ray or otherwise, it changes the calculations of your enemies as they don’t know just how well the weapon will work. As you can’t stop R&D of the other side, you have to keep your own on track. We are not talking about some kind of shoulder fired weapon, but taking a large power generator to charge capacitors which supply the lasers. Another example of Pandors’s box.
CBS
Broad is being particularly unfair to both the Air Force and critics of this particular experiment, like me, by giving the last word to an activist group warning that, if the experiment is conducted, “the barrier to weapons in space will have been destroyed.”</blockquote
He’s being unfair, not to you, but to the truth:
1) There is no “barrier” to weapons in space
2) This “weapon” wouldn’t be located there
3) This isn’t a “weapon” as much as a mechanism
for disabling space-based sensors (or space-
based “weapons”)
We’ve had ground-based laser weapons for quite some time, now. Not deployed, but certainly experimental.
Drat. You don’t take links.
Well, look here: http://www.wsmr.army.mil/pao/FactSheets/laser.htm
DS wrote: “I don’t see how this would work. You fire the laser up through the atmosphere, detecting distortion. With a lens, you can deform the lense to correct for the distortion, and get a clear picture, but how do you deform a laser beam to correct for the distortion??? ”
Not so difficult. Point a laser at the deformable mirror setup that corrects the atmospheric distortions. Tweak your system so that the correction is best at the wavelength of your laser. Wait for the PSF to reach a minimum and turn the laser on for a fraction of a second. Zap! R-nought (you can think of it as the time that correction is good for) is measured in tens or hudreds of milliseconds in the red end of the visual spectrum. If your system is fast enough you have enough time to zap the satelite while you’ve got effective correction. The idea would be, I think, to disable the satelite rather than destroy it. IR detectors on satelites are very sensitive. Wouldn’t take too much power to blind one.
The real trick would be designing a telescope/AO system that could track a satelite at several degrees per second. R-nought would tend to decrease and so the “window” of time where you could accurately deliver a focused laser would decrease to possibly microseconds. This means you would need a much more powerfull laser . . .
“I thought the Air Force had a missle weapon, carried by the F-15, that could shoot down satellites… Was that only for low-orbit birds?”
You’re talking about ASAT, made by LTV Aerospace (now part of the LockMart Borg consortium) which was scrapped back in the mid to late ’80s. There was an ASAT program bid out a few years later; I worked over the Christmas holiday only to have my company no-bid it.
Apparently Boeing has won the KEASAT program, but I have no idea if it’s still around. Amusingly, the purported photo of the prototype vehicle fas.org has up on its KEASAT page is actually a picture of a Martin Marietta prototype.
I have no idea what capabilities we have in place now. Hitting a satellite up at half geosynch would take a serious stack, I think. Going up to LEO altitude (100-1000 miles, roughly) is probably not hard.
Re-entry vehicles are tough in what sense?
It really depends on the radiation used in the laser and the pulse structure. Every material has certain light frequencies which it will absorb readily and the surface physics – both ablative plasma and surface evaporation due to laser effects – can be overcome by pulsating the laser to deliver several very intense jolts over seconds.
The big payoff in lasers in ICBM interdiction is in the boost and coast-phase of the launch. A laser that can operate in the atmosphere can attack ICBMs from a great distance.
As for “barriers” – the Russians and Chinese have tested Earth-based beam systems since the 70s as well as space-based suicide satellites.
What this boils down to is another ignorant reporter.
From the military perspective, this is the development of a weapon that would allow the disabling of surveillance & military communication satellites in the event of a war against a space-capable enemy. This makes perfect sense as more and more nations are become space-capable over time, and we don’t get to choose who our enemies are.
The technology (adaptive optics) also has plenty of peaceful uses in the meantime.
I suppose critics of this program would prefer we bury our heads in the sand or remain myopically focussed on the pursuit of OBL (like getting him would change anything in any event), then in the event of such a war, blame the administration for its failure to pursue such a policy?
UBL is becoming a sideshow attraction, which is a good thing. I don’t see how DoD keeping their eye on larger issues is bad, in fact if they weren’t I’d be expecting DefTech and others to be calling them out on it.
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