By Marina Malenic
The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) said it has delayed a repeat attempt to destroy a target missile using a chemical laser integrated into a Boeing [BA] 747 aircraft until at least this weekend.
Agency spokesman Rick Lehner said via e-mail that the Jan. 10 shoot-down attempt using the Airborne Laser Test Bed (ALTB) off the California coast was postponed because wind conditions were “too turbulent at altitude.” He said the next opportunity to conduct the test will be this weekend.
Lehner previously explained that the test would be “basically the same as the experiment” conducted last fall (Defense Daily, Jan. 11). During that exercise, the ALTB failed to destroy a solid-fuel, short-range ballistic missile in its boost phase (Defense Daily, Oct. 22, 2010).
The tests are conducted out of the Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center-Weapons Division Sea Range off the central California coast. ABL successfully shot down a target missile last February in the first such test of a flying directed-energy weapon.
Boeing produces the airframe and is the weapon’s prime contractor, while Northrop Grumman [NOC] supplies the high-energy laser and Lockheed Martin [LMT] develops the beam- and fire-control systems. The system is designed to focus a laser beam on a pressurized part of a boosting missile long enough to cause it to fail.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates scaled back the program into a research experiment last year. It had previously been called the Airborne Laser (ABL). The Pentagon requested $98.6 million for directed energy research, including ALTB, in FY ’11.