Posted on 06/23/2007 2:56:49 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Pentagon's flying raygun zips into budget battle
By Jim Wolf
Thu Jun 21, 4:41 PM ET
"Peace Through Light." That's the slogan of a Boeing Co. jumbo jet built to zap ballistic missiles shortly after they lift off, using laser rayguns.
U.S. decisionmakers were invited Thursday to inspect the bottle-nosed, silver-gray, modified 747 freighter on its first trip to the Washington area -- a 24-hour lightning tour that backers hope will help restore big budget cuts.
The Airborne Laser, or ABL as the $3.8 billion program is known, has shaped up as one of the biggest losers so far as U.S. President George W. Bush's fiscal 2008 defense spending plan is reworked by Congress.
Boeing, the prime contractor, has said a House of Representatives vote to slash $250 million from Bush's $549 million budget request would set the project back as much as three years.
The Senate Armed Services Committee, for its part, opted last month to cut $200 million. It would fully fund more technologically mature anti-missile systems such as the ground-based Patriot PAC-3 and ship-board Aegis ballistic missile defense.
"We're optimistic" that some of these cuts will be restored as the budget process continues, said Air Force Col. John Daniels, the Pentagon's ABL program manager.
The aircraft is to pack six laser modules, each the size of a sports utility van, to generate a basketball-sized beam capable of frying a foe's missile during its highly vulnerable "boost phase," when its engine is still running. A hydrogen peroxide mix fuels the lasers.
The works are to be fitted on the prototype aircraft -- the one showcased at Andrews Air Force Base in the Maryland suburbs of the U.S. capital on Thursday -- starting this summer ahead of a crucial demonstration now scheduled for mid-2009 using a mock enemy ballistic missile.
But if the current level of budget cuts becomes law, the shootdown attempt would have to be delayed at least two years, Daniels told reporters at a briefing in an Air Force hangar.
The aircraft is being developed as part of an emerging U.S. shield against missiles that could be fired by countries like North Korea and Iran, tipped with chemical, germ or nuclear warheads.
Under an Air Force "concept of operations" approved this year, the military hopes to acquire eight more modified 747-400 freighters for the ABL mission. The first of these would be a "bridge" to seven production models, averaging $1.5 billion apiece, Daniels said.
Capt. Tim O'Grady of the Directed Energy Division of the Langley, Virginia-based Air Combat Command said a squadron of seven ABLs could provide 24-hour coverage of one or more suspected missile-launch sites outside the range of surface-to-air missiles.
Supported by fighter aircraft and refueled in flight, ABLs based in the United States but within 24-hour range of anywhere in the world could be positioned to zap a launching missile from hundreds of kilometers away, at the speed of light, he said.
Aboard the aircraft, contractors sported flight patches on olive drab overalls proclaiming "Peace Through Light" and "Get 'em While They're Hot" -- a reference to shooting down targets while they are rising from the launch pad.
"This is truly a revolutionary system," Daniels told Reuters in a brief interview, saying it would "fundamentally change the physics of war."
"Using light to destroy things is a different way of doing business for the nation," he said.
Boeing won the ABL prime contract in 1996. Northrop Grumman Corp. is building the high-energy laser. Lockheed Martin Corp. provides the aircraft's beam control and fire control systems.
In the hangar, Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, and Greg Hyslop, Boeing's ABL project manager, were asked whether they could imagine Boeing's European arch-rival Airbus, a unit of EADS, competing to build the projected U.S. ABL squadron.
Both laughed somewhat nervously at the suggestion of a new front opening in the bitter transatlantic battle currently pitting Boeing against Airbus, teamed with Northrop, to supply an initial 179 aerial refueling tankers to the U.S. Air Force -- with victory potentially worth $40 billion.
Neither spelled out whether he could imagine a competition between Boeing and Airbus to supply future ABL platforms.
Flight and ground testing of the ABL aircraft is done at Edwards Air Force Base, California, to which the aircraft was to return Thursday night, the Missile Defense Agency said.
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It seems what Jim Wolf doesn't understand, he turns into science fiction - idiot.
This is a good system, its neat too, well worth the investment.
It is frustrating though.
:)
OBTW - lets let the French have our tax dollars for tankers and ABL carrying aircraft. Forget about the American manufacturing workers - Keep the EU worker employed. Let’s outsource our journalism to Russia and China while we’re at it. ( or have we?)
I think people don’t understand that this weapon system can do far more more than shoot down missiles. We’re talking TOTAL AIR SUPERIORITY wherever its deployed. Just one of these babies can augment AWACS and fighters to completely change the balance of power in a theater of conflict. I wonder if any of the critics have had their bank accounts fattened by our enemies?
There are lots of neat toys out there :) Lots of work for Americans and EU folks alike.
I wish we could “beam” them all (lib journalists) to an alternate reality...
LLS
In 1986 I debated a leftist professor at San Diego State U on SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative, aka Star Wars) as a rep for Danny Graham’s High Frontier Foundation. I started laughing on stage when my idiot opponent said that Space Based Lasers could be used to “start massive forest fires in Third World countries”. I got up and said, “Yes, we want SBLs so we can burn their little grass huts down”. The audience, which was generally supportive of the leftist prof, started laughing at him as well. The guy was so incensed he almost attacked me physically on stage.
I would have paid to see that :)
The ray pictures have had the ray depictions cartooned in. The rays ordinarily would not show.
They are already in an alternate reality...I just wish they'd stay there and leave this reality alone.
Thanks for the article, that’s an awesome piece of aircraft there. I don’t understand how we can throw billions at Iraq and have to quibble about a few hundred million for an asset this impressive.
If it works, and everything I've heard through the grapevine is that it, well, doesn't, and isn't even remotely close to working.
Defunding it and giving money to stuff that looks like it DOES work makes sense.
It would work great on ground concentrations too....could it burn a hole through concrete reinforcement (Iran’s nuclear sites....nudge nudge...wink wink...if you know what I mean.....)
I actually got to see this aircraft several years ago wen my Aviation Maintenance club at my school went to Seattle to visit “the land of the silver gods.”
The theories behind it are quite sound. Missles in their boost phase are quite vulnerable due to all that fuel encased in a relatively flimsy container. This is why they want to destroy them on the way up - it’s so much easier. Think about it. Base a few of these in Iraq, a few more in Japan and S. Korea, maybe a couple in Poland...
How many years did it take to develop the nuclear bomb? The stealth aircraft? The tank? Each of these significantly changed war and the way that wars are fought or will be fought. This weapon will do much the same thing and we will have it first! :)
Ladies and gentlemen of FR...I give you the flying platform for the Battle ZOT...the EC-99 Viking Kitty.
That’s funny.
One possible option is that there is something better in the shadows. A very big project ($$$$) appears to sucking up Air Force R&D funding and it is not the F-22,35 programs. Also this week the NRO canceled the stealth sat program. There have been several notable programs canceled in the last three years. The AF has something up their sleeve. You can't swing a dead cat in DC without hitting an AF general. That means lots of programs to manage.
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