I’m sure this has been posted at other places but I wanted to shoot you the lat­est video from Boeing show­cas­ing it’s Advanced Tactical Laser fir­ing a shot at a vehi­cle on the ground. The mod­i­fied C-130 was air­borne for the shot and hit almost dead cen­ter on the target.

Boeing says the laser dis­abled the vehi­cle, though this is not a video of that shot.

For Boeing’s next test, they’ll destroy a peace­ful, forested planet called Alderaan from a space sta­tion that looks like a small moon…

– Christian

We just got word that Boeing’s Airborne Laser Team con­ducted its first suc­cess­ful test in flight August 10 of a bal­lis­tic mis­sile inter­cept using a sur­ro­gate death ray.

A Boeing state­ment sent to Defense Tech indi­cates the mod­i­fied 747 went through all the processes to actu­ally down a mis­sile, except for the actual use of a weaponized high energy beam.

During the test, the mod­i­fied Boeing 747-400F air­craft took off from Edwards Air Force Base and used its infrared sen­sors to find a tar­get mis­sile launched from San Nicholas Island, Calif. The Boeing-developed bat­tle man­age­ment sys­tem aboard ABL then 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.

The ABL was basi­cally zeroed out of the 2010 defense bud­get and con­tin­ues on life sup­port as a quasi R&D pro­gram — which seems like a good idea. It’s this kind of test­ing that can result in bat­tle­field appli­ca­tions of high energy beam tech­nol­ogy for destroy­ing ground vehi­cles, air­craft and IEDs.

The test fol­lows ABL’s engage­ment of two un-instrumented mis­siles in early June, which allowed the team to fine-tune the engage­ment sequence.

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.

It seems that Boeing’s laser weapons con­tinue with suc­cess in the shad­ows of other, big­ger, more high-profile (and con­tro­ver­sial) programs.

– Christian

Military.com is run­ning a Stars ans Stripes arti­cle report­ing that “Laser-related eye injuries among U.S. Soldiers in Iraq have risen sig­nif­i­cantly in the last six months, prompt­ing the mil­i­tary to review its use of green lasers.”

According to the story “the lasers, also called ‘daz­zlers,’ put out a green light that looks a bit like a sniper rifle laser. They allow sol­diers to get the atten­tion of Iraqi dri­vers, with­out fir­ing warn­ing shots, at secu­rity check­points, in mil­i­tary con­voys and on vehi­cle patrols. And if a sus­pi­cious vehi­cle or pedes­trian doesn’t stop, the lasers can tem­porar­ily blind or dis­ori­ent, giv­ing sol­diers a means of sup­pres­sion with­out fir­ing bullets.”

The green lasers are part of the Soldiers’ “esca­la­tion of force” kit and accord­ing to one offi­cial “give the Soldiers some­thing between shout­ing and shoot­ing.” (Nice hook, that.)

The arti­cle states that at least five U.S. troops have been med­ically evac­u­ated from Iraq since December due to seri­ous eye injuries caused by green lasers, accord­ing to U.S. mil­i­tary officials.

So if we’re look­ing for some­thing between shout­ing and shoot­ing shouldn’t it be some­thing that doesn’t poten­tially per­ma­nently blind peo­ple? What could that be? Hold it, let’s take a les­son from Texas law enforcement:

Read the entire arti­cle here.

– Ward

Wired reports:

Huge news for real-life ray guns: Electric lasers have hit bat­tle­field strength for the first time — paving the way for energy weapons to go to war.
In recent test-blasts, Pentagon-researchers at Northrop Grumman man­aged to get its 105 kilo­watts of power out of their laser — past the “100kW thresh­old [that] has been viewed tra­di­tion­ally as a proof of prin­ci­ple for ‘weapons grade’ power lev­els for high-energy lasers,” Northrop’s vice pres­i­dent of directed energy sys­tems, Dan Wildt, said in a state­ment.…
The battlefield-strength break­through is just one part in a larger mil­i­tary push to finally make laser weapons a real­ity, after decades of unful­filled promises. The Army recently gave Boeing a $36 mil­lion con­tract to build a laser-equipped truck. Raytheon is set to start test-firing a mortar-zapper of its own. Darpa is fund­ing a 150 kilo­watt laser project that is meant to be fit­ted onto “tac­ti­cal aircraft.”

Hmph. Call me old fash­ioned, but I still believe in lethal­ity via high-velocity iron. Lasers sound cool enough, but furi­ously push­ing to deploy them on the bat­tle­field gives me this “some­one watched too much Star Trek” vibe — like there’s a secret cabal of Pentagon geeks out there try­ing to make the Star Fleet a real­ity.
So the ben­e­fits are… what? Ammunition becomes obso­lete, logis­tics sim­plify. IEDs will be safer to clear and incom­ing mor­tars eas­ier to pluck from the skies. And no doubt the nifty –how­ever pricey– air­borne laser would be for­mi­da­ble, if it works as adver­tised.
But even Boeing, one of the technology’s most vocif­er­ous advo­cates, seems a bit dubi­ous on the awe­some fac­tor for bat­tle­field energy weapons, brag­ging: “…the sys­tem also took a step toward demon­strat­ing a counter-unmanned aer­ial vehi­cle capa­bil­ity by destroy­ing two small unmanned aer­ial vehi­cles that were sta­tion­ary on the ground.”
Two parked UAVs eh? Suppose the broad-side of a barn was unavail­able for tar­get­ing.
So color me skep­ti­cal. No doubt there’s some prac­ti­cal warfight­ing appli­ca­tion here, but when I pic­ture Star Wars-esque blaster fights, I can’t help but to pic­ture smirk­ing insur­gents hold­ing up their bath­rooms mir­rors as body armor. Though as a mat­ter of record, I will gladly eat my words if Boeing dis­cov­ers a way to fix these things to a shark’s head.
–John Noonan

Boeing announced today another suc­cess­ful test shoot of its Airborne Laser prototype.

This time tech­ni­cians fired the laser using its track­ing and con­trol sys­tem to guide the beam through the nose-mounted tur­ret at a sim­u­lated mis­sile target.

Of course, this was all done on the ground.

It won’t be until next year that the sys­tem will engage a mis­sile tar­get while both are in flight. But the news reminds us that behind the scenes, the ABL pro­gram — and its off­shoots — are mak­ing quiet progress toward even­tual field­ing of a no-joke fly­ing laser cannon.

Release fol­lows in part:

During the test at Edwards Air Force Base, the laser beam trav­eled through the beam control/fire con­trol sys­tem before exit­ing the air­craft through the nose-mounted tur­ret. The beam control/fire con­trol sys­tem steered and focused the beam onto a sim­u­lated ballistic-missile target.

“This test is sig­nif­i­cant because it demon­strated that the Airborne Laser mis­sile defense pro­gram has suc­cess­fully inte­grated the entire weapon sys­tem aboard the ABL air­craft,” said Scott Fancher, vice pres­i­dent and gen­eral man­ager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems. “With the achieve­ment of the first fir­ing of the laser aboard the air­craft in September, the team has now com­pleted the two major mile­stones it hoped to accom­plish in 2008, keep­ing ABL on track to con­duct the mis­sile shoot­down demon­stra­tion planned for next year.”

Michael Rinn, Boeing vice pres­i­dent and ABL pro­gram direc­tor, said the next step for the pro­gram is a series of longer-duration laser fir­ings through the beam control/fire con­trol system.

“Once we com­plete those tests, we will begin demon­strat­ing the entire weapon sys­tem in flight,” Rinn said. “The team is meet­ing its com­mit­ment to deliver this trans­for­ma­tional directed-energy weapon sys­tem in the near term.” 

– Christian

The Office of Naval Research held its annual part­ner­ship with indus­try con­fer­ence last week here in Washington, DC. The envelop-pushing Navy lab is par­tic­u­larly keen on devel­op­ing game chang­ing laser beam and hyper­ve­loc­ity rail gun weapons. Much of the avail­able fund­ing is for early phase mod­el­ing and sim­u­la­tion. Some of ONRs high-priority research areas include: 

Solid-State Fiber Laser. Defined by ONR as: A laser in which the active gain medium is an opti­cal fiber doped with rare-earth ele­ments such as erbium, ytter­bium, neodymium, dys­pro­sium, praseodymium and thulium. Okay. ONR says a fiber laser is the way to go for a 100 kW laser weapon that could fit into air­craft pods. 

Free Electron Laser. A ship­board point defense weapon, the laser will fight off swarms of both high end anti-ship cruise mis­siles and low-tech, explo­sive laden small boats. The trick will be devel­op­ing con­trol­lable laser beam strength for grad­u­ated lethal­ity and speed of light engage­ment. An Innovative Naval Prototype pro­gram is sched­uled to begin in 2010. 

High-Power Microwave Directed Energy Weapons. A focused microwave beam trans­mits high lev­els of energy via con­cen­trated radio waves that will knock out com­put­ers, sen­sors, most any­thing elec­tronic. So far, ranges have been lim­ited by weak pro­jec­tors and a clut­tered envi­ron­ment, but newer, com­pact high-power microwaves under devel­op­ment may even­tu­ally pro­duce a destruc­tive capability.

(more…)

It’s inter­est­ing that this should come out now because I was just talk­ing to Ward after his glo­ri­ous show­ing on Fox News Channel where he dis­cussed the air­borne laser pro­gram that I thought the real leap in this arena was with the tac­ti­cal laser being incor­po­rated onto a C-130. 

Well, it turns out, the pro­gram office just had another suc­cess­ful test of the sys­tem, this time run­ning through all the com­po­nents of the laser gen­er­at­ing device, through its tar­get­ing sys­tem and onto a target. 

Sure, the test was on the ground, but come on, it’s a laser gun for cry­ing out loud. Looks like the Boeing team that’s run­ning this show put the whole kit and kaboo­dle on the air­plane and basi­cally ran through an entire fir­ing pro­ce­dure with­out being actu­ally in the air.

From Boeing:

During the test Aug. 7 at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., the ATL air­craft, a C-130H, fired its high-energy chem­i­cal laser through its beam con­trol sys­tem. The beam con­trol sys­tem acquired a ground tar­get and guided the laser beam to the tar­get, as directed by ATL’s bat­tle man­age­ment sys­tem. The laser passes through a rotat­ing tur­ret on the aircraft’s belly. 

“By fir­ing the laser through the beam con­trol sys­tem for the first time, the ATL team has begun to demon­strate the func­tion­al­ity of the entire weapon sys­tem inte­grated aboard the air­craft,” said Scott Fancher, vice pres­i­dent and gen­eral man­ager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems. “This is a major step toward pro­vid­ing the ultra-precision engage­ment capa­bil­ity that the warfighter needs to dra­mat­i­cally reduce col­lat­eral damage.” 

After con­duct­ing addi­tional tests on the ground and in the air, the pro­gram will demon­strate ATL’s mil­i­tary util­ity by fir­ing the laser in-flight at mission-representative ground tar­gets later this year. 

(more…)

After last week’s tac-laser test, looks like laser mis­sile defense is mov­ing closer too…

From Boeing:

The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA], indus­try team­mates and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency achieved another sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for the Airborne Laser (ABL) mis­sile defense pro­gram this month by com­plet­ing the first laser acti­va­tion test­ing on the ground at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The final plumb­ing and wiring instal­la­tions will be com­pleted in the com­ing weeks. All major com­po­nents of the weapon sys­tem, includ­ing the bat­tle man­age­ment sys­tem, laser com­po­nents, and beam control/fire con­trol sys­tem, were installed earlier.

Laser acti­va­tion test­ing is a method­i­cal process to ensure ABL’s high-energy chem­i­cal laser has been prop­erly inte­grated aboard the air­craft and is ready to pro­duce enough power to destroy a bal­lis­tic mis­sile. The tests first flow water or other inert sub­stances through the laser to ver­ify its integrity. Next, the laser’s chem­i­cals flow through the laser to con­firm sequenc­ing and control.

When the acti­va­tion tests are com­plete, ground fir­ings of the laser will occur, fol­lowed by flight tests of the entire ABL weapon sys­tem. The test phase will cul­mi­nate in an air­borne inter­cept test against a bal­lis­tic mis­sile in 2009.

The ABL air­craft con­sists of a mod­i­fied Boeing 747-400F whose back half holds the high-energy laser, designed and built by Northrop Grumman. The aircraft’s front half con­tains the beam control/fire con­trol sys­tem, devel­oped by Lockheed Martin, and the bat­tle man­age­ment sys­tem, pro­vided by Boeing.

I sin­cerely wish Boeing luck on this one. It seems incred­i­bly com­pli­cated and sort of a niche capa­bil­ity that in an era of tight­en­ing Pentagon bud­gets might be seen as overkill. But to the extent the pro­gram enhances US knowl­edge of high-end lasers, it’s a good pro­gram to have around.

– Christian

Well, it looks like Boeing has taken a step closer to mak­ing its air-to-ground laser blaster a real­ity with a recent test shoot from a specially-constructed C-130 sit­ting on the ground.

Boeing has fired a high-energy chem­i­cal laser aboard a C-130H air­craft in ground tests for the first time, achiev­ing a key mile­stone for the Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration program. 

The suc­cess­ful laser fir­ing occurred May 13 at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. 

“First fir­ing of the high-energy laser aboard the ATL air­craft shows that the pro­gram con­tin­ues to make good progress toward giv­ing the warfighter an ultra-precision engage­ment capa­bil­ity that will dra­mat­i­cally reduce col­lat­eral dam­age,” said Scott Fancher, vice pres­i­dent and gen­eral man­ager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems. 

After con­duct­ing a series of addi­tional laser tests on the ground and in the air, the pro­gram will fire the chem­i­cal laser in-flight at mission-representative ground tar­gets. The test team will fire the laser through a rotat­ing tur­ret that extends through the aircraft’s belly. 

We wrote about this a while back after an inter­view with pro­gram offi­cials dur­ing a con­fer­ence call on the air­borne laser pro­gram — a 747 equipped with a laser designed to shoot down bal­lis­tic mis­siles. Well, looks like Boeing made good on their pre­dic­tion and the pro­gram remains on track to cre­ate a laser gunship.

(more…)

So, a few months ago you might remem­ber we talked about a series of tests of Boeing’s air­borne laser — a mas­sive, Rube Goldberg con­trap­tion housed in a 747 freighter aimed at knock­ing down bal­lis­tic missiles.

During a phoner press con­fer­ence, Boeing offi­cials men­tioned in pass­ing they were work­ing on another sys­tem that could engage ground tar­gets. To me, this seems far more log­i­cal for such a weapon than one that’s designed to knock out missiles…that mis­sion strikes me as redundant.

Well, now it seems Boeing has taken the first step in mak­ing the laser gun­ship a real­ity by installing the weapon on a C-130H…

Boeing com­pleted the laser instal­la­tion Dec. 4 at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. The laser, includ­ing its major sub­sys­tem, a 12,000-pound inte­grated laser mod­ule, was moved into place aboard the air­craft and aligned with the previously-installed beam con­trol sys­tem, which will direct the laser beam to its target.

With the laser installed, Boeing is set to con­duct a series of tests lead­ing up to a demon­stra­tion in 2008 in which the pro­gram will fire the laser in-flight at mission-representative ground tar­gets to demon­strate the mil­i­tary util­ity of high-energy lasers. The test team will fire the laser through a rotat­ing tur­ret that extends through the aircraft’s belly.

“The instal­la­tion of the high-energy laser shows that the ATL pro­gram con­tin­ues to make tremen­dous progress toward giv­ing the warfighter a speed-of-light, pre­ci­sion engage­ment capa­bil­ity that will dra­mat­i­cally reduce col­lat­eral dam­age,” said Scott Fancher, vice pres­i­dent and gen­eral man­ager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems.

“Next year, we will fire the laser at ground tar­gets, demon­strat­ing the mil­i­tary util­ity of this trans­for­ma­tional directed energy weapon.” 

I just love the idea that a JTAC could soon call in for a laser strike on a tar­get. Move over Spectre, say hello to the new “Vulcan” can­non (Star Trek ref­er­ence here).

ATL, which Boeing is devel­op­ing for the U.S. Department of Defense, will destroy, dam­age or dis­able tar­gets with lit­tle to no col­lat­eral dam­age, sup­port­ing mis­sions on the bat­tle­field and in urban oper­a­tions. Boeing’s Advanced Tactical Laser indus­try team includes L-3 Communications/Brashear, which made the laser tur­ret, and HYTEC, Inc., which made var­i­ous struc­tural ele­ments of the weapon system. 

Can’t wait to see the test shoot next year…

– Christian