Big stakes for lab to build battle laser

Oakland Tribune ^ | October 27, 2003 | Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

[demlosers]

General says he'll come up with $150 million if scientists produce mobile device within 18 months.

A two-star Army general threw down a challenge last week to Lawrence Livermore scientists: He will beat the bushes for more than $150 million if scientists can build the world's first mobile battle laser for test firing in 18 months. Livermore laser engineer Bob Yamamoto had been begging for this chance. But Livermore, specializing in nuclear explosives, never has built a full-up, firing weapons system for the battlefield.

"Eighteen months is very aggressive, and I'm saying that very politely," said Yamamoto.

On Tuesday, Major Gen. John M. Urias, the Army's chief acquisitions officer for air and missile defense, drew lab scientists and defense contractors into the hallway of an Albuquerque hotel so they could voice last-minute reservations.

Yamamoto, grinning wildly, said not a word.

The general then strode into a convention room and told 640 top U.S. directed-energy experts that Livermore's laser -- today, a profusion of wires, crystals and diodes on a tabletop -- was ready to be shoehorned into a Humvee and prove its mettle as a tactical weapon.

"We are no longer technology-limited. We are resource-limited," Urias said by phoneFriday. "I think we should charge on."

If he gets the money for Livermore and its team of defense contractors, the general suggested, the Army would get a prototype weapon that could open the military's imagination to what mobile lasers can do on the battlefield.

"I am convinced personally that the technology is evolving fast enough that we can do this," he said.

Three weeks earlier, the general donned green goggles in Yamamoto's lab and saw the world's most powerful solid-state laser drill through an inch of steel in two seconds.

"If anybody doubts what I am asserting, they need to go out to Lawrence Livermore lab and see this demo," said Urias, deputy commander of the Army Space and Missile Defense Command and acquisitions executive for Air and Missile Defense.

More than the flying sparks and burning steel, he noted that the laser's components -- hundreds of lithium-ion batteries, a chilled-water cooling system, control chips and the nine-foot laser itself -- could be shrunk at least in half, even as engineers install bigger slabs of garnet to create more light and a more powerful beam.

If Urias can find the money, the clock starts ticking for Yamamoto to triple his laser's power to 40 or more kilowatts and, within a year, make it hardy enough for firing out of a Humvee. Fortunately, Yamamoto said, the thick, clear crystals of manmade garnet already are being grown.

"It will be ruggedized so it doesn't fall apart when they hit a pothole. We'll be able to drive around and hit targets on the ground and maybe -- maybe -- targets in the air," Yamamoto said. "That's a little fuzzy right now...But we'll be able to hit targets out of the sky."

Ultra-high power diodes like the ones in CD players and supermarket scanners have propelled solid-state lasers into an arms race with giant, chemical-powered lasers. The Army's Tactical High Energy Laser, pumped by combusting chemicals, already have shot Katyusha rockets and artillery shells out of the sky.

Those shootdowns ushered high-energy lasers out of Buck Rogers science fiction and into military reality. But for years to come, chemical lasers are likely to remain bulky and needful of fresh chemical supplies at a time when the Army wants high mobility and less reliance on supply lines. Solid-state lasers are electric. They can run off a Humvee's diesel-hybrid engine or perhaps a jet fighter's turbine.

"I see ultimately that for U.S. Army purposes, we will most likely and even definitely down-select to a solid-state implementation. Because it works," Urias said.

Yamamoto shares the faith. But he's a bit unnerved at being handed the challenge that he courted.

"Twelve months is as challenging as it gets to put a six-slab system, ruggedized, in a Humvee," he said. "We won't see our children in those 12 months."

Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com .

[Paul Ross]

Ping. SDI finally is pushing to field weapons.

[Alamo-Girl]

Yeehaw! Thanks for the heads up!

[PuNcH]

I bet it would be good for anti aircraft and anti missile.

[inPhase]

BQ for the jhpssl, no way and they know

[inPhase]

no thermal blooming for air platform if you could get any on ax intens at range

wrt TB, dwell time is way too short

even head on

[PoorMuttly]

Muttly WANT mobile Battle Laser !

Oh...right.

Muttly want BIGGER mobile Battle Laser !!!!

[inPhase]

coil is trying to

phase

hel modules together, never been done

the multiwavelengths for the scoring, and beacon are different supposedly to tell them apart

who cares will never work

what they are grabbing big dollars for is on the ground -- which works SEE
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/laser-03e.html



also here

http://optics.org/articles/ole/7/5/5/comment/view/53

[inPhase]

MIRACL is DF and not airborne, but on the ground

airborne laser would use much longer wavel, COIL

techies,
why can't they get COIL to higher powers, just a fact and the why of a need to phase together

[inPhase]

It depends on the range .


But you are right,
the path from the lab to field of jitter is a long road for some lasers and some engagement geometries.

Not necessarily easy to spoof, many many scenarios involved.
But governmment weinies (NOT MIL incl) have no training and just want big laser viagra programs, often no chance to work.
Need rockets too.

Lasers will be developed by other countries.

The euros are beating us in space, transferring bigger images and faster

[webstersII]

"I bet it would be good for anti aircraft and anti missile."

Maybe, but you have to keep it trained on the incoming threat for long enough, a difficult task if the threat is coming in at +Mach numbers.

The targeting systems are the main weakness in the SDI scenarios for ICBMs, although considerable progress has been made since Reagan first coined the term "Star Wars".

[Laserman]

Actually the COIL is SHORTER wavelength. The problem with making COIL larger is a plumbing problem- very nasty chemicals and complex mixing processes, especially to fit into an aircraft.

[inPhase]

yep is 1.3

wrt plumbing

df is doing ok at HP

but there are no HE coils

strange
maybe they thought would be more compact?

but abl 14 mod would be heavier bigger than thel

[Laserman]

Actually, for SDI type systems the ATP (acquisition, tracking and pointing) and Fire Control are on the same order of difficulty as the laser device itself, unless you consider full blown scenarios with 100's or 1000's of simultaneous launches and deployment of 10,000 midcourse objects. Then ATP-FC is THE challenge. The laser device problem is how to either put many (10-30 or more) huge lasers into space and keep them running, or how to relay a ground generated beam to the target via big space mirrors. Both are tough problems.

[Yeti]

I hope they have a coherent plan.

I think I'm the only person who got that one, so I guess it falls on my shoulders to break it to you that it wasn't very funny. But, don't feel bad: they can't all be masterpieces.

[Laserman]

The attraction of COIL is both the wavelength (thus smaller optics), and the beam quality (allows easier/cleaner propagation). Powers similar to HF/DF have not been achieved yet. But then some of the biggest lasers ever were CO2, but because of their even longer wavelength and large size, they too did not cut it. Looks like solid state lasers, fiber lasers and maybe some new electric gas lasers may be where it is at for the future.

[inPhase]

no
many people know, there are many physicists here

just obvious that "they" do not have coherence when they phase their systems being discussed
ie BQ

[Laserman]

Fortunately, we have our birghtest working on the problem!

[inPhase]

but COIL is not new

fiber lasers need phasing together

although German trumpf (5KW reasonable BQ SSL) and southhampton uk are ahead (fibers 600 mW polarized and 1+kW non pol both single single mode)

[Laserman]

Thermal blooming develops in a fraction of a second. Fortunately, for moving targets and slewing shots the clearing time is sufficient to mitigate much of the effect/loss. When a target is coming right down your beam, especially for a ground system, the TB problem can be significant, and AO can ony correct a portion of it. Pulsed lasers can do better, but the best is having two systems for mutual defense.

[Laserman]

Phasing fiber lasers is coming. Sounth Hampton's work looks very promising.