By Ann Roosevelt
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the Boeing [BA], Northrop Grumman [NOC] and Lockheed Martin [LMT] industry team said yesterday the prototype Airborne Laser (ABL) successfully conducted its first two tracking tests against boosting missile targets.
“A truly historic accomplishment,” Boeing ABL Vice President and Program Director Mike Rinn said in a teleconference.
Boeing is the prime ABL contractor, while Northrop Grumman contributes the laser system and Lockheed Martin provides the beam control/fire control system. Boeing also supplies the modified 747-400F aircraft.
The successful June 6 and 13 tests put the program in a strong position going into the next several tests of the system with a surrogate laser against instrumented ballistic missile targets (Defense Daily, June 17).
In about a week, Rinn said, ABL will engage an instrumented Black Brandt missile.
These engagements will be followed by the first firings of the high energy Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) in the air, before a much-anticipated shootdown of a ballistic missile target during the boost phase–slated for this fall.
MDA is developing the ABL as an element in developing technologies that could be used in the future to engage hostile ballistic missiles in their ascent phase.
While the program has its critics, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) this week continued to support its research and development, thus authorizing the fiscal year 2010 budget request of $186.7 million for the program. The committee also said it still has concerns about the “operational effectiveness, suitability, survivability and affordability” of the program.
The full house has yet to vote on HASC’s version of the bill; the Senate Armed Services Committee and full Senate are still to act.
Considering program funding, Rinn said the ABL program needs more funds to have a more robust test program and “go beyond the naysayers” and show the military utility of directed energy technology.
These June tests mark the first time ABL demonstrated a complete low-power engagement sequence against a boosting target. Both targets were ground-launched Terrier-Lynx missiles. The missiles were launched from San Nicolas Island, in the Naval Air Warfare Center-Weapons Division Sea Range, Calif.
The first, June 6, test came only seven weeks after the aircraft returned to flight, and follows nearly a year of aircraft and system modifications, including the installation of its megawatt-class chemical laser, MDA said.
The Terrier-Lynx missile is some six meters long with rapid acceleration to altitude, and can reach around 250,000 feet, Rinn said.
The ABL aircraft was flying at a “significant,” militarily useful range, he said, while not being specific about range or altitude.
After detecting the missile with its on-board sensors, ABL tracked the target and compensated for atmospheric distortions before firing a low-power laser simulating the megawatt-class COIL that will be used in later tests.
During both tests, the system acquired the missile when it broke through the cloud deck. The automated acquisition systems “went without a hitch.”
The track illuminator locked on to the plume of the missile, moved up toward the nose of the missile, fired the beacon illuminator laser, then the atmospheric compensator laser and closed the tracking, jitter and wave front loops, Rinn said.
The surrogate COIL laser, using the same wavelength as the actual COIL laser, arrived at the target at the correct place.
The actual laser, already integrated into the aircraft, was not turned on. However, Northrop Grumman ABL Program Manager Guy Renard said, “We did have people on board to operate part of the laser in the back of aircraft…[while it was tracking the target missile]…had the alignment system for laser up and running and were able to maintain alignment throughout the flight and engagement.” This was one of the risk areas being examined as the laser moved from ground testing to flight.
“The first mission went flawlessly,” Rinn said. However, the aim point for the laser was a little to far toward the back end of the missile, so researchers dialed in a change, and when the second test came, it was “flawless.” MDA and the program office are still looking at the data, and the system will be tuned a little more, but the test was very successful, he said.
The tests were predominantly of the beam control/fire control portion of the system, not the high-energy laser.
“The opportunity we just went through was historic,” Mark Johnson, Lockheed Martin ABL program director, said. “We were able to actively track a boosting missile with the laser–including atmospheric compensation–to get the surrogate high energy laser on target.”
In July, a handful of optics will be changed in the front of the ABL aircraft, Rinn said.
Beyond the current work, the program is interested in looking at system design and the ascent phase, which takes place once a missile booster has burned out. The ability for ABL to engage in both boost and ascent phases of missile flight increases the military utility of the system. The program would like to do some tests at longer range, examine the ability to load and reload quickly, conduct salvo engagements and look at other missions such as counter air and counter surface to air missiles.
“We see tremendous potential in what we’re developing,” Rinn said.