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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."
The laser is on a plane this size because a laser powerful enough to destroy missiles from miles away is a big fat bulky ass piece of equipment, that won't fit on a fighter plane.
It's a chemical laser. The fuel for the laser takes up a big chunk of that space.
The laser is invisible - off in the infrared somewhere. You could only probably see the beam at night as it ionizes the trace amounts of noble gases in the atmosphere. Then again, a bird or a swarm of beetles flying through the beam would be pretty spectacular. . .
Don't look at laser with remaining eye.
This sig is a test. If this had been an actual sig, you would be reading something quite a bit wittier than this now.
Perhaps you are confusing this with "Aurora", which doesn't exist (yet)(maybe).
FYI, the basic U-2 airframe is still in use, now designated the TR-1. The airplane part isn't particuarly secret, it's the payload (cameras, radar, ECM, etc) that is secret.
I imagine they would combine the laser with surveillance and detection functions such as AWACS or Joint STARS. In those cases it would not be such a strange idea to have one on CAP (Continuous Air Presence) over certain theatres of operation. But to defend all of the US with these would be a bit impractical.
Which leads to the question: what other stuff could they zap with this? Ground-based launchers? Enemy fighter aircraft? SAMs? Or is this thing only good against ballistic weapons?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
http://www.airbornelaser.com/
http://www.airbornelaser.com/
The offical project website with pics progress reports et al.
The ABL system is to be a key part of what is known as Boost Phase missile defense. The idea is that you fly the 747 based ABL system in circles over friendly territoy monitoring a neary balistic missile threat (imagine flying over Japan and watching North Korea). When an enemy ballistic missile is launched, the ABL uses its laser to blow-up the missile while it is climing through the atmosphere (having the advantages of being full of fuel, rising slowly and over enemy territory). See FAS for details.
That's not the point. The idea is to cruise for a long time over the battlefield, and zab ballistic missiles during the boost phase, should any take off. Think of the first gulf war (not the iran-iraq one, the one with iraq vs the rest of the world), when a big concern was mobile launchers launching scuds out of nowhere.
The missiles are easier to hit in the boost phase, since they're not moving that fast yet, and there's a big and hot rocket plume behind them. They are also easier to destroy, since they're still full of rocket fuel. Also if they have nasty NBC stuff in them, it lands back where the things was fired from (more or less) as opposed to where they was aimed (more or less).
"An object declared as type _Bool is large enough to store the values 0 and 1." -- 6.1.2.5, C99 standard.
I wonder what color the laser is...
I hear the green ones burn out your eye
Actually the laser beam will be invisible (unlike the the one in the movie Real Genius), as it is in the infrared range of light. This particular frequency of light also lends itself to good transmission through the atmosphere. More info here
Another interesting thing about the laser is that it's a chemical laser that genrates energy through the reaction of oxygen and iodine.
Which means that the plane will have a limited number of shots (I believe three or four) before it has to go and refuel.
The power of this laser would not heat up and pop the popcorn like in the movie, but would vaporize a nice hole right to the ground.
I hear the green ones burn out your eye
Looking into a laser or letting laser light into your eyes is a very bad idea, no matter how low the power may seem. Even for the pen lasers that are everywhere. You do not know what the consequences may be, and harm to your eyesight is not worth it.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I work in the optics field and there was a feature on the ABL in a recent magazine that I get (Optics and Laser Europe).
There are actually a number of lasers involved in the whole system:
CO_2 lasers are usually operated at 10.6m wavelength, which is absorbed fairly strongly by water in the atmosphere, so I wouldn't imagine that the beam has a huge range (probably large enough though).
What intrigued me most was that there is only enough fuel on board for ~12 shots, which isn't that much. The fully loaded laser system also weighs 77tons, so I imagine that the plane uses a good deal of fuel to stay up.
unless the US is planning to have many planes airborne, around the clock, which does seem somewhat wasteful.
You mean like the height of the Cold War when bombers with hydrogen bombs where kept airborne around the clock?
"Throughout the Cold War there were times when tension nearly escalated to nuclear war. The most dramatic was in June 1962 when a U-2 spy plane photographed Soviet missile bases being built on Cuba, 90 miles (145 kilometers) off the coast of Florida. For 14 tense days, the world feared nuclear war would begin. Finally, in the words of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, "the Soviets blinked" and removed the missiles. Khrushchev noted that the nuclear threat, especially the fact that "20 percent of all Strategic Air Command planes, carrying atomic and hydrogen bombs, were kept aloft around the clock," had been a major part of the withdrawal decision." more
-- Jason
In this case the lasers are multiple megawatt and last time I checked the military was using chemical lasers to yield that kind of output. So it's likely a limited number of shots, and an entire 747 is taken over for the purpose.
The laser probably wouldn't work from space, the more atmosphere you have to send it through, the weaker your laser is going to be when it gets where it's going. I'd guess the plane is going to be relatively close to the target.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This depends on the reflectivity of the mirror. If it would be 99.999%, only some 10W would get absorbed by the missile. Un(?)fortunately, it is not possible to make mirrors with such a good reflectivity across all possible wavelengh. Especially in the IR range, it's quite difficult to make mirrors with >98% reflectivity. And I suppose the laser will be in the IR range.
The reason the 747 even has that bubble, is because the 747 was orginally going to be a cargo-only plane and the nose-cone on freighter versions of 747's flip up so you can slide big cargo straight onboard.
My understanding is that the "Laser" (insert Dr. Evil reference) is big enough that there wouldn't be much room for people. The hatch for the beam is on top just behind the bubble. This is a great angle to hit inbound ICBM comming from above the aircraft, but a lousy angle to catch SAM rockets from below it.
This is a boring sig
You should read up on IFF , Safe Passage Corridors, Army procedure and their uses together.
Some people here on Slashdot just think it's as simple as a trigger-happy autonomous system. Think about what these systems (Patriot, ABL) have to do and realize that it's not easy.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
I guess it's a chemical laser, and probably uses things like flourine gas (nasty nasty nasty, but very energetic). You can read some info about these kinds of things here
This old report from 1999 actually suggests it uses some other strong oxidisers like hydrogen peroxide and halogens - chlorine and iodine.
Basically you don't want to be breathing these things in, but you there's a lot of energy available in their reactions.
This is not a sig
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
That's what many people think. However, the laser kills targets not by vaporizing the entire thing, but rather by converting a small percentage of the target into plasma that expands and then the rapid expansion slaps the target to death. The mirror would have to be perfect. The smallest deviation or imperfection would capture energy and then turn into plasma. This would deflect the target at the very least.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Er, no. The beam exit is from a steerable turret on the nose of the aircraft, and can cover almost the entire hemisphere in front. Note the nifty animation on it's home page. ;-)
Also, it is not designed to destroy "inbound ICBMs", it is designed to go after boost phase missiles just after launch. They are easiest to see then, moving relatively slowly, under stress, can't launch decoys AND the debris (including warheads) falls on the launching party's territory. That's the theory anyhow...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I call bullshit. Here's why.
Missiles are expensive. Missiles that can hit a target across thousands of miles are even more expensive. Those aren't expensive because they're costly to manufacture, they are expensive because they are costly to develop. Consequently any state that has ICBMs capable of striking the United States is likely to have a lot of them. Similarly the warhead on an ICBM is a fair bit more advanced than your rudimentary WOMD, largely because it has been miniaturized to allow it to fit in an area about the size of a four drawer filing cabinet.
If anyone is going to attack the US with missiles, they are going to do it with a lot of missiles, not a few that they purchased. It is easier to deploy a small number of warheads with stealth than with missiles. Large numbers of warheads require missiles.
So what is the system for then? If it can't knock down a large volley of missiles and we can't expect these "rogue nations" we keep hearing about to attack with ballistic missiles what is the system for?
The answer is simple really; it defends against a second strike. It is an order of magnitude more expensive to make weapons designed for second-strike capability: that is to say, weapons that will survive the first portion of a nuclear exchange. These second strike weapons are what creates the concept of deterrence. If China launches on us today, the nuclear subs and some of the hardened silos will survive, which will be enough to reduce China to a smoking crater. Thus China doesn't launch.
Now take this from the Chinese perspective. Much like the former Soviet Union, China's nuclear weapons follow a first strike doctrine. China's weapons are, for the most part, un-hardened, land based, fixed sites. The result is that China's nuclear doctrine is fixated on striking first (which is fairly destabilizing). If someone else strikes China first, China has very few missiles left with which to retaliate. And this system is designed to stop a very few missiles.
In other words, missile defense systems are now, and have always been designed to prevent the United States from suffering the consequences of escalating a conventional conflict to a nuclear one.
This in turn made a lot of sense in the cold war. Since nuclear deterrence is based on the infamous 3 Cs (Capability, Credibility, and Communication) and the ABM programs made our Credibility stronger (with these systems we were more likely to use nukes when we said we would) the ABM system would have made our bargaining position with the Soviets stronger.
However, today there is no Cold War. China has, for the most part, decided that we're not worth pissing off, and no other antagonistic force has a sufficient quantity of nuclear weapons to bother challenging the US in a conflict in which ballistic missiles are likely to be used. ABM today is little more than graft, and ill-conceived graft at that. The system makes the US less likely to consider the horrific consequences of using a nuclear weapon in a tactical situation (much like the proposals by the Bush administration to use nukes in the caves of Afghanistan).
In short, every argument you make above is incorrect. Aircraft mounted ABM is ineffective because you can only hit during launch, and that requires being over a country pissed enough to launch nuclear weapons at you. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction does not imply the proliferation of the technology necessary to make those weapons strategically deployable. And 500 billion, while a bargain to save a city, won't do so because anyone with 20 or fewer weapons is far more likely to put a bomb on a boat and sail it to NYC than they are to put it on a missile at about a thousand times the price.
Finally, the deterrent factor doesn't exist. Until someone works out a way to eliminate (or hell, even FIND) Ohio class (or the soon to be deployed Virginia class) ballistic missile subs at sea, our deterrent is very, very, very safe.
ABM is a bad idea. It makes a nuclear exchange more likely, and that is bad for everyone.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
So, would a mirror coating on a missle be an effective counter measure to this laser?
.23 meters per minute through inch thick highly polished stainless steel.
That shouldn't be too difficult to do... heck, I was silvering mirrors in highschool chemistry class.
Well this laser is probably a COIL (chemical oxygen iodine laser), the military's favorite for laser weapons systems these days... COILs operate at a frequency of 1.315 micrometers... which is in the mid infrared band, for those that don't know... most mirrors (and substances) are opaque at this frequency; most of the light on this band is from blackbody radiation... here's an excellent primer on infrared transparency and absorbency...
You can make a dichroic mirror that reflects that wavelength, but the expense of coating a missle with it may be a couple orders of magnitude greater than the cost of the missle itself.
Here is a study of cutting different aerospace materials with a COIL. With a 6kW laser, they acheived a cut rate of
So if you added a mirror to a missile, and this laser is 1MW with comparable focusing capabilities as that used in the above study, assume that it's pulse duration is somewhere in the neighborhood of a tenth of a second, and that the missile is covered with quarter-inch thick stainless steel (unlikely due to weight), and that you have to cut through 10 centimeters of the missile before you affect it's circuitry enough to guarantee non-operation, your mirror would have to be 96.5% efficient in order to work. Mirrors in the near infrared band are typically 80% - 90% efficient using exotic glass chemistries and aluminum front surfaces... this mirror in the mid infrared band would have to be significantly more efficient with far more difficult manufacturing techniques...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
I wonder what color the laser is...
I hear the green ones burn out your eyes.
It's already been said but let me repeat, any laser can burn out your eyes. Even low powered ones, when focused by the iris, can burn out portions of the retina.
This laser is infrared; that's actually WORSE than green. With a visible light laser, your eye sees the bright light and your pupil contracts to limit the exposure. With infrared, you can be in a pitch black room with pupil at full dilation and not even notice it. Until about six hours later when your vision slowly fades out.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
For people that think it's too slow/big/whatever. Take a look here on the abl page. It fly's a ways away. Basically, if fighters were scrambled toward it first, the US would know a war had begun. If missile are launched first, it can take a few down before it has to run from the fighters.
For people that say it has no use because ICBMs are cheap and so many would be launched: China and Russia have lots of ICBMs. Not many others do. It costs a LOT of money. Because the first time you have to use it it HAS to work, you have not only the missiles, but the silos, the staff, the training (continuious), the fuel care, etc, etc, etc. Maintaining a stockpile of ICBMS is a LOT of money. And not easy as russia showed by boinking 2 sub launched ICBMs during Putin's dog and pony show before the election.
Also, remember, it's limited shots because it's chemical. This isn't some type of perfect solution to fighting in the sky.
also remember that this is focused on exploding the fuel tank on a ballistic missile, nothing else.
Also, the Kenetic Interceptor contract has been awarded for development of a boost phase hit to kill interceptor which will provide layered defense with the ABL. These things create a launch area denied, not blanket coverage that means no missile will ever be launched.
Reference This picture. There ain't room for anything else. And probably won't be any time soon.
I do security
Second, the ABL is not used for homeland defense, but for theatre defense:
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/
Oh spare me the Bush administration line. Gaddafi (if your going to engage in a geopolitical discussion learn how to spell) was already in the process of trying to rejoin the World community long before Dubya even took office. This had nothing to do with WMDs (Libya's WMD arsenal was a joke -- though at least it actually existed which is more then you can say for Iraq) and everything to do with Libya admitting it's role in the PAM-AM 103 bombing and turning over those responsible.
"It ended up deterring Gaddafi"? Give me a break. Deterring him from what? Was he about to use his WMDs on the Western World or start bombing airliners again? Somehow I doubt it. But hey, if you think the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war is so great maybe you should put on a uniform and volunteer for duty in Iraq. I know lots of people in the military and regardless of what they might say in public they are starting to tire of the neo-con vision of Pax Americana.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I care less what Bush says than what actually happened.
"Gaddafi (if your going to engage in a geopolitical discussion learn how to spell)"
There are many valid spellings for the dictator;s name, including several each beginning with the letters G, Q, and K. I doubt you know this; you probably think that Qathafi is the King of Arabia or something like that.
" trying to rejoin the World community long before Dubya even took office"
Talk about not knowing how to spell. You are using the left-wing pundit insult for the President. thus throwing any credibility you might have had out the window.
Point of fact: what you claim is not true anyway. Khadaffi did not admit the Lockerbie action until after Bush was in office: that is no way to "Try to rejoin the global community."
"(Libya's WMD arsenal was a joke -- though at least it actually existed which is more then you can say for Iraq)"
The Iraqi WMD's existed, and even you know it. How do we know? Saddam had used them before, and up until he forced the US to invade, he had refused to document what he had done with the remaining ones.
"Was he about to use his WMDs on the Western World or start bombing airliners again? Somehow I doubt it."
True, he was acting somewhat like a beaten cur. This is partially because of Reagan's retaliatoriy bombing after Qadaffih killed Americans in Germany.
"But hey, if you think the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war is so great maybe you should put on a uniform and volunteer for duty in Iraq"
"Pre-emptive"? What is pre-emptive about a retaliation for someone blatantly violating a cease-fire and engaging in more than 2000 attacks against Americans?
" I know lots of people in the military and regardless of what they might say in public they are starting to tire of the neo-con vision of Pax Americana"
if they even believe in such myths.
1) Muammar Qaddafi 2) Mo'ammar Gadhafi 3) Muammar Kaddafi 4) Muammar Qadhafi 5) Moammar El Kadhafi 6) Muammar Gadafi 7) Mu'ammar al-Qadafi 8) Moamer El Kazzafi 9) Moamar al-Gaddafi 10) Mu'ammar Al Qathafi 11) Muammar Al Qathafi 12) Mo'ammar el-Gadhafi 13) Moamar El Kadhafi 14) Muammar al-Qadhafi 15) Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi 16) Mu'ammar Qadafi 17) Moamar Gaddafi 18) Mu'ammar Qadhdhafi 19) Muammar Khaddafi 20) Muammar al-Khaddafi 21) Mu'amar al-Kadafi 22) Muammar Ghaddafy 23) Muammar Ghadafi 24) Muammar Ghaddafi 25) Muamar Kaddafi 26) Muammar Quathafi 27) Mohammer Q'udafi 28) Muammar Gheddafi 29) Muamar Al-Kaddafi 30) Moammar Khadafy 31) Moammar Qudhafi 32) Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi
By the way, the country is spelled Libya, not Liberia. Bet you had NO idea!
Um, yeah.
Any laser powerful enough to modify your cornea, such as the ones used in lasik surgery that is referred to later, would also be powerful enough to ablate off pieces of skin if pointed at bare flesh.
There is a study out there where they took people who had eye cancers and were scheduled to have eyeballs removed soon anyway, and they focussed a common laser pointer at a single spot in the eye for something like 30 minutes straight. No lasting damage.
I don't know about the new green lasers. They look a hell of a lot brighter, but they don't have any more energy than a red laser. The increased visibility is purely due to the human eye's increased sensitivity to green light.
A few tens of millions of dollars could allow the installation of radiation detectors for every point of entry for Manhattan
Ok, so here's what someone does. They take their homemade Nuclear Fission Bomb, goto the radioation detectors (assuming it isn't shielded enough and is actually detected), wait till they set the alarms off and blow the bomb. GOOD BYE a chunk of New York New York. HELLO blast crater. You'd have to setup the detectors at a distance far enough to intercept the bombs without endangering the city if the bomb explodes. Good luck dooing that since you would need many more, and a survielence system to make sure no one sneeks through the net, or disables the detectors and then slips through.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
This poster is entirely correct, except for one part.
imagine flying over Japan and watching North Korea
In truth, very detailed studies have found that the laser weapon the ABL uses, though flying in the stratosphere (above most weather) would be ineffective even though the thin clouds that sometimes form at that elevation. Even on a clear day, the range of the laser is quite limited, necessitating that the airplane fly within surface-to-air (SAM) missile range of North Korea to even hope of hitting any missiles. Iran was the other test case for this system, unfortunately Iran is much larger than North Korea, and the plane would have to be flying over Iran itself to be within range of interior missile sites.
This project is pretty much a handout to the defense industry and vestige of the beam weapon dreams held over from the Star Wars heydey under Reagan.
I happen to have written a semester essay (PDF) precisely on this topic. I wrote the essay for an excillent course that deals with nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, missile defense, and arms control. The course website contains a host of up-to-date information and links, and is the longest running course of it's kind.
For a much broader and in depth view of boost phase missile defense, please see this APS study on the subject. I reccommend the brief, but informative executive summary. (PDF)
This system isn't designed to take out an ICBM, it's designed to take out short range ballistic missiles. Like, for example, the Katusha rockets that Hezbolla fires from Lebanon at Israel every month or so.
It would be silly to have a 747 (big, easy to shoot down) orbiting over china or even north korea just waiting for that ICBM to launch. (Remember, this is designed for shooting it down in the boost phase, which means the airplane has to pretty much have line of sight to the launch site). How many seconds do you think it would take china to take out every 747 that had line of sight to their missile silos if they were going to start a nuclear war? Even if you take a wide view of "boost phase" and assume you can sit over the middle of the pacific and shoot down a missile from china, it's not hard to blow away a 747. They are big, slow, can't manuver, show up trivially on radar...
However, assorted terrorist groups that fling missiles at Israel don't generally have the ability to shoot down a plane; furthermore, it can be circling inside Israeli airspace, with line of sight to all plausible launching sites for a missile with a range of tens of miles.
And additionally, the missiles have historically been launched a few at a time. So if the laser has only a dozen shots or so (see other posts about how this is a chemical laser, and thus has limited number of shots), one or two of these planes would have the ability to shoot down the size of salvo that has historically been used. And a dozen of these planes would be able to shoot down every missile the terrorists launch in a typical year, so you could even stop them from stockpiling and doing a single big strike.
Sure, they'd just move to a different tactic. But shutting down a tactic that terrorists are known to use, and have been using for decades, is worth some investment...
Actually, What the article doesn't tell you is it's completely worthless for ICBMs. It's only effective against short and medium range ballistic missiles. Somebody else said that this was a case of the military planning for the last war, and not the next war, and they're absolutely correct. This was planned in response to the Scud attacks against US troops, Kuwait, and Israel in the '91 Gulf War. Quite frankly, the Patriot Missiles didn't cut it, and their use was more effective as a propaganda effort than anti-missile effort.
This is more effective for future police actions against states like Iraq who have the capability to strike their neighbors. As the US is protected from short and medium range ballistic missiles by the pacific and atlantic (barring some odd twist with Canada, Mexico, or Cuba), this is actually an attempt at preventing a rogue state in a hostile situation from launching a 'last ditch' missile attack against neighbors.
Just a nit-pick.
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca