Boeing Completes Preliminary Design of Free Electron Laser Weapon System

Boeing ^ | 3/18/2010 | Boeing

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

The Boeing Company has successfully completed the preliminary design of the U.S. Navy's Free Electron Laser (FEL) weapon system, a key step toward building a FEL prototype for realistic tests at sea.

During the preliminary design review held March 9 to March 11 at a Boeing facility in Arlington, Va., the company presented its design to more than 30 U.S. government and National Laboratory representatives. This electric laser will operate by passing a beam of high-energy electrons through a series of powerful magnetic fields, generating an intense emission of laser light that can disable or destroy targets.

"The Free Electron Laser will use a ship's electrical power to create, in effect, unlimited ammunition and provide the ultra-precise, speed-of-light capability required to defend U.S. naval forces against emerging threats, such as hyper-velocity cruise missiles," said Gary Fitzmire, vice president and program director of Boeing Directed Energy Systems. "The successful completion of this preliminary design review is an important milestone in developing a weapon system that will transform naval warfare."

In April 2009, Boeing was awarded an Office of Naval Research contract valued at up to $163 million -- with an initial task order of $6.9 million -- to begin developing FEL. The Navy is expected to decide this summer whether to award additional task orders to Boeing to complete the FEL design and build and operate a laboratory demonstrator.

Boeing Missile Defense Systems' Directed Energy Systems unit in Albuquerque and the Boeing Research & Technology group in Seattle support the FEL program. The company has partnered with U.S. Department of Energy laboratories, academia and industry partners to design the laser.

Boeing is developing laser systems for a variety of defense applications. Besides FEL, these systems include the Airborne Laser Test Bed, the High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator, and Laser Avenger, among

[Rebelbase]

At first glance I thought this thread was going places:

“Boeing Completes Preliminary Design of Free Election Laser Weapon System”

[HiTech RedNeck]

So how do they get from the electron beam to a photon beam?

[mylife]

Now lets strap Obama to a gurney and run the laser up between his kegs ala James Bond,

[Myrddin]

So you need an EMP weapon to disable the laser before you send in the missile to nail the ship.

[mylife]

Kegs? opps its Michelle that has keg legs.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Unless they install EMP proof chips and wiring.

[null and void]

One FEL swoop...

[bunkerhill7]

They beam it up with a Scotty.

[IrishCatholic]

It’s not the weapon, it’s the will to use it.

Somali pirates in skiffs are taking millions of dollars in ransom from hijacking.
How long would any of them last if the mentality was to kill the pirates at sea, burn their bases on land, and shell their mother ships until they are at the bottom of the ocean?

Having a FEL is great unless it is on a ship with 5 inch cannons, anti ship missiles, armed helicopters, and a government unwilling to use any of them but wants to fly in the FBI to negotiate.

That being said, I’m glad they are doing this research. I hope it produces a viable weapon. The bad guys are still arming.

[bwc2221]

Will this work any better than Boeing’s virtual border fence?

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Boeing has been on a roll with direct energy weapons.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Boeing has produced the ABL and ATL both of which has been resounding successes.

[DoughtyOne]

Virtually...

[piytar]

They shouldn’t have done a press release. The only reason obama hasn’t cancelled this like he cancelled the F22 is that he probably never heard of it (or understood what it was if he did)...

[redlegplanner]

Press on, Boeing. President Palin will put your efforts to good use, starting Jan 2013.

[tommythev]

From Wikipedia

To create an FEL, a beam of electrons is accelerated to almost light speed (technically known as relativistic speed). The beam passes through an FEL oscillator in the form of a periodic, transverse magnetic field, produced by arranging magnets with alternating poles within a laser cavity along the beam path. This array of magnets is sometimes called an undulator, or a “wiggler”, because it forces the electrons in the beam to follow a sinusoidal path. The acceleration of the electrons along this path results in the release of a photon (synchrotron radiation). Since the electron motion is in phase with the field of the light already emitted, the fields add together coherently. Whereas conventional undulators would cause the electrons to radiate independently, instabilities in the electron beam resulting from the interactions of the oscillations of electrons in the undulators and the radiation they emit leads to a bunching of the electrons, which continue to radiate in phase with each other.[4] The wavelength of the light emitted can be readily tuned by adjusting the energy of the electron beam or the magnetic field strength of the undulators.

Neat stuff.

The company I worked for in the ‘80’s provided microwave control components for the initial trials of this weapon. We had done a bunch of work for the Stanford Linear Accelerator and CERN so the physicists involved had heard of us. At the time the system was envisioned as a ground based laser that would use orbiting mirrors focus several laser beams to intercept ICBMs (part of the Star Wars program). Anyhow I got to tour Boeings facility.

Much of our work at the time was building phase and amplitude control components for military applications and since a lot of this stuff was airborne, it was desirable for our devices to be as small as possible. In building our products, we often used tiny capacitors that were 15 mils by 15 mils by 3 mils. At Boeing I saw some capacitors they were evaluating for the larger version of the FEL project and they were larger than a refrigerator!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Laser warfare takes to the high seas

*****************************EXCERPT************************************

A new type of laser weapon system touted as the holy grail of military lasers took a step closer to reality last week when Boeing Directed Energy Systems announced the successful completion of the initial design of the U.S. Navy’s Free Electron Laser (FEL).

Credit: John Adams Institute

The shipboard FEL will focus a lethal 100-kilowatt beam at surface and air threats, future anti-ship cruise missiles or a swarm of small boats.  FELs are electrically generated so can draw on the power of the ship to provide a virtually unlimited magazine with speed-of light delivery for a wide range of missions. In this way, it will provide U.S. ships with a more powerful means of self-defense.