Factory Testing of Airborne Laser Cannon Completed

Acid-F1ux writes "Lockheed Martin has completed factory testing of the optical benches for the Airborne Laser's Beam Control/Fire Control (BC/FC) system. The Airborne Laser (ABL) is the first megawatt-class laser weapon system to be carried on a specially configured 747-400F aircraft, designed to autonomously detect, track and destroy hostile ballistic missiles."

747-400F

[mfh]

The 747-400F [baworldcargo.com] could be Airforce One (if it's not already), so it would be understandable if these lasers were mounted to it for tracking incoming sidewinders or surface to air missiles. Not sure if it's fast enough for that, or could be. While the BC/FC may be designed to take out larger missiles, this weapon system might make a really smart pro-active chaff system, to secure the President from harm during flight. I think it's a little strange the BC/FC is being mounted on such a large aircraft, with slow scramble speed and low maneuverability, unless the US is planning to have many planes airborne, around the clock, which does seem somewhat wasteful. Nothing is said about the range of this laser, so I'm not sure if it would work from space or not.

Autonomous?

[JosKarith]

I'd be interested by their definition of autonomous - are we talking this thing cruising around looking for a target, or are we talking an operator flagging a missile spotted by something else and the machine taking over from there.
Either way, brace yourselves for a thousand Terminator/Robotic master references.

I seen this in Popular Science

[nharmon]

Some time ago, Popular Science did a story on this aircraft. The laser beam originates at the tail end of the 747, and is deflected up and over the nose to allow the mirror in the nose to aim the laser in wide arcs.

So, will this technology make the fighter jet obsolete? I mean, you can't very well out-maneuver a laser. Which means that bombers will have laser weapons on the front, back, top, bottom and sides. Kind of like back in WWII when bombers had machine guns all over the place.

This certainly changes everything.

Re:It's about time

[Goon Number 1]

The U2 [142.26.194.131] wasn't around for 50 years when it was discovered [archives.gov]. YOu may be thinking of the SR-71, which was around for maybe 25 years before they started talking about it in public.

Mirrors?

[VoidEngineer]

So, would a mirror coating on a missle be an effective counter measure to this laser?

That shouldn't be too difficult to do... heck, I was silvering mirrors in highschool chemistry class.

Reading between the lines . . .

[StateOfTheUnion]

The Airborne Laser (ABL) is the first megawatt-class laser weapon system to be carried on a specially configured 747-400F aircraft, designed to autonomously detect, track and destroy hostile ballistic missiles.

Reading between the lines: This could imply that:

A less than megawatt laser system may already be mounted and in use on the 747-400F.

A megawatt laser system may already be mounted on other (than the 747-400F) type(s) of aircraft.

A megawatt laser system may already be in use in the military for purposes other than the destruction of ballistic missles.

Call me a tinfoil hat guy, but when the military talks about its secret stuff, often what they don't say is more informative than what they do say.

I wonder where its positioned

[TerminalInsanity]

Cos if its on the bottom of the plane, its going to have to be generaly above the missile, and then if it misses, i wonder what that beam is going to hit?

More True than Funny

[Allen Zadr]

Actually this is the final product of the same research [vectorsite.net] that was the backdrop of that movie [imdb.com].

That is one POWERFUL laser pen!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm near-sighted from a laser pen in the library of my elementary school. No, I'm not joking"

Nearsightedness, or astigmatism, is caused by the shape of the eyeball being different. That is one powerful laser pen to have warped your eyeball!. Are you sure it was not some sort of force-field projection gun?

Re:I seen this in Popular Science

[bigattichouse]

Stealth does not protect optically, only against radar... They show up quite well against white clouds. You could build a pattern recognition system to scan the skies around for dark spots that don't match up to things on radar... granted this might be mistaken for something else, but if it has a trajectory not consistent with a heavenly body or an object on the ground, then you have a pretty good candidate for a stealth fighter. zaAap

Re:747-400F

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Except that laser point defense is already used in aircraft. Civilian ones too.

To protect a plane, you don't need to destroy the missle. It just has to miss. When the missle is detected, a relatively low power laser can disable the seeker head on an IR missle.

Remember the two El Al jets that were fired upon in Kenya? They were both equipped with this system. There is consideration that this system might be installed in American jets. It's automatic, and the pilot doesn't need to know if it's decoyed missles. Nothing he can do anyway.

Re:Mirrors?

[merlin_jim]

COIL lasers (the military's current favorite for weapons class lasers) operate at 1.3 micrometers, in the mid to far IR range. And the laser's mode of resonance (transverse to an ionized gas flow in a traditional cavity) is not conducive to frequency doubling...

And, at 1 MW, this thing will punch a hole in a cloud without blinking...

Theatre-wide blinder system?

[carcosa30]

The first thing I think of when I see this is that it could be used for a blinder/dazzler with an immense range. Instant air superiority.

Someone said "green lasers burn out your eye..." This may or may not be true of green lasers but I understand that their wavelength is much more subject to diffusion by microabrasions in such materials as glass. If they're shone at car windows, supposedly the effects vary from a large blinding spot on the window to turning the entire window into a brilliant green sheet.

I understand that blinding lasers are against some Geneva accord. They're so different from blinding grenades, and blinding napalm, and blinding shell fragments, don't you know... Whether or not we respect the Geneva convention at all anymore, or whether such a ruling might just be trampled on by us if we ever got into extremis such as a fight with another technological power, I can easily see us using a theatre-wide laser this way. The benefits would be huge.

Re:Just deluge it...

[Anonymous Coward]

When the you own the ground by the USA owns the skies driving around in a missle truck probably isn't the best way to make a living. Iraq had a lot more scudds than they fired. And in the case of North Korea, they can either get completely squirrle and just randomly fire one off, in which case the boomer undoubtably cruising off their coast sends CNN's stock to Mars, or they can confront the US in which case every fixed installation is not servicable for anything but putting up "Man Made Lake, Coming Soon!" signs. Seoul is pretty much a smoking heap of gravel no matter what, it's in artillary range of the boarder, and they'll get at least a few off. They've got a handful of missles, that if they work as designed would be able to maybe hit the west coast and Hawaii, but they haven't worked as designed yet. The test that got everyone's panties twisted failed. As crazy as Kim Jong Ill's hair-do is, he's not not so devoid of self-preservation that'd he'd go all in with 7 high and a deck he full well knows is stacked against him. Those muslim fuckers might be that crazy. But he's not.

The ABL is predicated on the assumption that when the US wants to use it, the US will be able to establish air dominance and complete suppression of air defenses. A good assumption, assuming one isn't talking about Russia, and maybe China. And it might be a good assumption even if one is.

Don't forget Iraq had the most heavily defended air space, and 4th largest army in the world. That distinction passed to North Korea after the first Gulf War. Now can we pacify and rebuild Iraq? Who knows. One would hope. But that's completely different from having North Korea pass the torch to another nervous runner-up. And unlike Saddam, they're keenly aware of this.

Re:747-400F

[WormholeFiend]

"Which leads to the question: what other stuff could they zap with this?"

Enemy fuel supplies.

Till Bill, Part 1

[kmankmankman2001]

The Track Illuminator Laser (TILL) illuminates the body of a missile to determine where to point the high-energy laser. Then, the Beacon Illuminator Laser (BILL) is used to determine atmospheric distortion in order to correct the shape of the high-energy laser to shoot down the missile. Tarantino's reach knows no bounds!

Re:747-400F

[Shakrai]

It's not that they sucidial - it's that the leaders are not rational. It is very difficult to reason with someone that doesn't not percieve the world in the same way that you do. North Korea is a very good example of this at work.

Actually leaders of nation-states usually are rational even if they want you think otherwise. The leader has something to lose -- the terrorist has nothing to lose. For all of North Korea's bluster have they launched any ICBMs at the South, Japan, or Hawaii? Kim knows if he does that his country will be turned into a glowing parking lot -- henceforth he won't do it. There's a big difference between trying to blackmail concessions out of someone and actually using your weapons.

Little known factoid: The reason that chemical warfare didn't happen on a widescale in WW2 (like it did in WW1) was because Hitler knew the Allies had massive stockpiles of chemical weapons that they would use in retaliation. Do you think that Kim Jong II or Saddam have/had anything on Adolf Hitler? Even Hitler knew better then to go down that path. Deterrence and MAD works despite what the Bush administration wants you to believe.

Besides I'm more scared about the terrorist trying to sneak a crude nuke into NYC on a container ship then I am of North Korean missiles. Or how about blowing up a liquified natural gas ship in a major harbor? That would deal almost as much damage as a small nuclear device -- and Al Quada actually had plans to do such a thing in Boston a few years back.

Why don't we start worrying about our real enemies?

a couple of thoughts

[dotmax]

Although the range of this system is "limited" to a few hundred miles, it has substantial capacity within its engagement radius. 1. It can nail missiles v.v.quickly -- it doesn't have to notice them launching either, because it will be que'ed through sensor fusion technology, such as JSTARS, AWACS and the DSS (might have the wrong name) satellites which, among other things, are specifically designed to see rocket launches. 2. I must have missed the Death Ray observation -- this has high value for snapshots at someone like ... say, Osama. 3. On the Geneva Convention and Blinding. The current administration is big-time on the record as stating that it follows the GC, and that the GC _only_ applies to _Lawful_Combatants_. The Current Administration is explicit in calling Al Queda et alia -- terrorists in general -- unlawful combatants. ERGO, the current administration does not believe the GC will prevent them from burning the eyes out of a bunch of terrorists. Also of note: the GC addresses blinding weapons, not weapons which happen to blind as part of their normal operation. 4. I suspect there are some interesting anti-infrastructure/anti-material applications we haven't mentioned yet. F'rex: starting area fires, burning down oil storage facilities, elec. dist. systems These apps are doable w/o laazers, but an ABL might leave a more difficult-to-diagnose footprint. 5. how q(.)(.)l!!!

Way to fast.

[tellezj]

One aircraft can shoot down several missiles in succession (multiple launch scenario). Additionally it is going after ballistic missiles. In order to get the accuracy it needs, predictive filters are in place to intelligently guess the kinetic position of the missile as it flies. The filter use models that are based on what a ballistic missile does. Deviate too much from that and the accuracy goes to pot. Couple that with the fact the the lasers don't go off untile the target is above the cloudline and the only mistakes that are likely are if North Korea decides to send a man in orbit during a war. (Wasn't there a cartoon about that)

Re:747-400F

[Shakrai]

I'm surprised anybody talks about MAD anymore, because it's an obsolete notion. Let's say we're at war with a nation having a small nuclear arsenal (say, 100 warheads), and accurate missiles capable of hitting the US. With their back against the wall, the other nation launches a limited nuclear strike against a military target not on American soil, say a carrier battle group. Tens of thousands of military personnel die.

No, it's not an obsolete notion. What nation with 100 warheads are we going to war with anytime soon? And how would you purpose to launch a "limited nuclear strike" on a "military target not on American soil"? If you hit a military base "not on American soil" you are attacking the country where that base is located. If you hit a carrier battle group it has defenses that can intercept and destroy inbound nuclear weapons. You can't use an ICBM to hit a mobile target like a carrier battle group. They have existing defenses that are quite effective at protecting them from nuclear and non-nuclear threats.

Yet, with nothing now to lose, that would prompt the other nation to launch their entire arsenal against the USA as soon as they spotted the incoming missiles.

Again, I ask you, what nation are we at war with that even has the ability to detect incoming missiles? The only two countries in the World that can detect ICBMs and still have enough time to do anything about them (i.e: They can detect them when they are launched) is the United States and Russia. Are we going to war with Russia anytime soon?

Instead, the American president would use the doctrine of limited nuclear war. He would likely order a similarly limited strike on an enemy target, communicating his intentions clearly so as not to risk massive retaliation. Missile defence is designed to fit into this doctrine, since limited nuclear war relies heavily on the ability to selectively and accurately destroy targets.

"Limited nuclear war"? It's this type of thinking that makes nuclear war plausible. There is no such thing as "limited nuclear war". If your foe has ICBMs and you can't destroy them in a first strike (nuclear or otherwise) then you can't have "limited nuclear war". I can't think of many things that I'd be willing to trade LA or NYC for -- even with a missile defense shield that's 90% effective are you going to roll a 1d10 if a "five" means NYC is glassed?

As things are right now, nuclear missiles are highly desirable because they are accurate, fast, and unstoppable.

They are also extremely expensive and hard to build. The only countries in the World with ICBMs are the United States, the European Union (France and the UK), Russia and China. North Korea has an untested missile that may be able to hit the Western United States. Nobody else has the ability to deliver a nuclear warhead to American soil short of smuggling it in -- and your missile defense shield won't do anything about that now will it?

For instance, would the leader of the other nation expend one of his precious nuclear warheads if it had a 75% chance of being intercepted?

Would the leader of the United States (or Russia for that matter) go to war with a country that had a 25% chance of taking LA or NYC (or Moscow) out? Unless you can build a 100% effective missile defense system then it's pointless.

I think the present situation of total vulnerability is ludicrous, and missile defence will make nuclear war far less likely. It's a visionary idea that is being opposed by people who think that if we ignore nuclear weapons, they will go away.

What total vulnerability? Who is going to hit us with an ICBM? We'd know about it the minute it was launched and chances are there would be hundreds of American warheads in the air before their ICBM even hit us. Nobody in their right mind is going to nuke Honolulu, LA, or NYC if they know we will turn their country into a parking lot before their missile even hits us.

What's the most l