Thanks for Marc and Matt for holding down the fort while I was away.
The FAA issued three “notices to airman” (NOTAMs) that indicate that the Air Force is taking the Airborne Laser (ABL) out for a little spin this week:
7/3701 – .. SPECIAL NOTICE.. EFFECTIVE 0706101700 UTC UNTIL 0706102300 UTC. AIRBORNE LASER OPERATIONS WILL BE CONDUCTED WITHIN 25 NM FROM ANY POINT ALONG A LINE STARTING AT 401212N/1003542W OR THE MC COOK (MCK) VOR/DME AND ENDING AT 362036N/0995248W OR THE GAGE (GAG) VORTAC, NOT EXTENDING BELOW FL180. THIS AREA WILL BE MONITORED BY OBSERVERS AND THE LASER BEAM WILL BE TERMINATED IF NON-PARTICIPATING AIRCRAFT ARE DETECTED THAT MAY ENTER THE AFFECTED AREA. OTHER VISUAL EFFECTS E.G. FLASH BLINDNESS, AFTER IMAGE, GLARE, AND DISTRACTION MAY OCCUR AT GREATER DISTANCES. THE DOMESTIC EVENTS NETWORK /DEN/ AT 202-493-5107,IS THE FAA COORDINATION FACILITY. WIE UNTIL UFN
7/3506 – .. SPECIAL NOTICE.. EFFECTIVE FROM 0706101300 UTC UNTIL 0706102200 UTC, AIRBORNE LASER OPERATIONS WILL BE CONDUCTED WITHIN 200 NM RADIUS OF 352130N/0973636W OR THE IRW VORTAC, FROM FL180 TO FL280. THE LASER BEAM MAY BE INJURIOUS TO PILOTS/AIRCREWS AND PASSENGERS EYES FOR A DISTANCE OF 6000 FEET BELOW THE AIRCRAFT, NOT EXTENDING BELOW FL180. THIS AREA WILL BE MONITORED BY OBSERVERS AND THE LASER BEAM WILL BE TERMINATED IF NON-PARTICIPATING AIRCRAFT ARE DETECTED THAT MAY ENTER THE AFFECTED AREA. OTHER VISUAL EFFECTS E.G. FLASH BLINDNESS, AFTER IMAGE, GLARE, AND DISTRACTION MAY OCCUR AT GREATER DISTANCES. THE DOMESTIC EVENTS NETWORK /DEN/ AT 202-493-5107,IS THE FAA COORDINATION FACILITY. WIE UNTIL UFN
7/3818 – SPECIAL NOTICE EFFECTIVE 0706121700 UTC UNTIL 0706122300 UTC. AIRBORNE LASER OPERATIONS WILL BE CONDUCTED WITHIN 20 NM FROM ANY POINT ALONG A LINE STARTING AT 422812N/0984112W OR THE O’NEILL (ONL) VORTAC AND ENDING AT 385530N/0973718W OR THE SALINA (SLN) VORTAC, NOT EXTENDING BELOW FL180. THIS AREA WILL BE MONITORED BY OBSERVERS AND THE LASER BEAM WILL BE TERMINATED IF NON-PARTICIPATING AIRCRAFT ARE DETECTED THAT MAY ENTER THE AFFECTED AREA. OTHER VISUAL EFFECTS E.G. FLASH BLINDNESS, AFTER IMAGE, GLARE, AND DISTRACTION MAY OCCUR AT GREATER DISTANCES. THE DOMESTIC EVENTS NETWORK /DEN/ AT 202-493-5107,IS THE FAA COORDINATION FACILITY. WIE UNTIL UFN
Reading these is a little tough, but basically—as you can see from the map—they’ve set up three ranges, two on June 10 and one on June 12.
Two of the test ranges are linear, each running a couple hundred kilometers between navigation beacons and within a short flight from the Boeing ABL facility in Wichita. The third is a circle with a 200 nm radius centered on a beacon in Oklahoma.
Boeing & MDA recently completed the first in-flight “firing” during a flight out of at Edwards Air Force Base in CA—I enclose “firing” in quotes because they used a laser to track an airborne target.
The “firing” part—in the common sense of the word—is yet to come. The tests this week are for the “surrogate high energy laser” that is, well, a surrogate for the actual laser called the Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser or COIL.
Here is how General Obering previewed these tests:
I will tell you that what I have seen since November 2004 is a steady progression. There has been some minor delays here and there as they work through—mainly these are integration issues now. The actual functioning of the components, the laser modules themselves, the optical train and everything else, they have pretty much knocked down the technical issues.
That is not to say that they’re out of the woods. There’s still work to be done. As I said, we should have some significant knowledge points on the program in the coming weeks, especially by the end of June, if they stay on the schedule that they’re on.
We should be able, by that time, to know whether the tracking laser works properly. As I said, we’ve tracked targets 75 kilometers away and closed that fire control loop. We should know if the beam illumination laser, the atmospheric compensation laser, is working properly and feeding that information into the system. And we actually have a surrogate of the high-energy laser on the aircraft as well. So we should know if the entire system is working the way that it is designed by the end of June. That’ll be a significant look ahead.
And then if all of that is successful, we will dismantle—we will put the aircraft back on the ground, we’ll open it up, and we’ll reassemble the high-energy laser on board the aircraft and get that back in the air next year, so that we can attempt to shoot down a boosting missile in the mid-part of 2009.
Michael Fabey with Aviation Week has a nice summary of what MDA and Boeing hope to achieve with these tests.
2009, you say? That’s close, right?
Well, the thing is this is the fourth test date that MDA has identified for the “lethal shoot down.” The schedule slippage—and a very tough GAO report entirled entitled Actions Needed to Improve Information for Supporting Future Key Decisions for Boost and Ascent Phase Element—led the House Armed Services Committee to express “little confidence that this date will not slip into 2010 or possibly later” and cut $250 million from the program, leaving a demonstration program that may or may not include a lethal demonstration in the event MDA can pull it off.
The Senate also whacked the ABL program ($200 million, I think … not sure), but Boeing is gearing up a major effort to save the program that will undoubtedly include any good news from these tests of the surrogate laser.
“What ABL needs to do to stay viable is to make its milestones,” the ABL program officer told Aviation Week.
Stay tuned.
Anybody know the actual output power of the COIL (the real laser, not the surrogate)? They keep saying “megawatt class” but I’m guessing its more like a quarter megawatt. Also, any news on whether they’ve solved the problem of phase-locking the laser modules?
Actual power of combined coil modules is classified and/or obscured. Calculation requires arrays of assumptions like range, atm., engagement angle. But the coil by nature is limited to “low” power by its population process. that is why combining 6 modules (or more) would be necessary. The geometric configuration needed for alignment would be bigger than the plane can allow and the phasing of the modules has only “succeeded” at watts levels, never been done at high power and of course there would be substantial energy losses. They all know this, General Trey O included. Abl is a Spruce Goose scam at best. And we did not even discuss the impossibility of the adaptive optics they require for a go.One more thought, if you look out of your plane at altitude, the horizon is 200km away. The abl points down to engage a target!!
Last time I checked, the most power available from a commercial COIL was 20 kW, available in Japan, and the unit was about the size of the individual units indicated in viewgraphs of the ABL. But MDA claims they’ve been able to push COIL unit power, using Japanese help. Assuming they might have gained a factor of two, I come up with about a quarter megawatt for 6 of them. Or less.
I don’t see why “the geometric configuration needed for alignment would be bigger than the plane can allow.” Phasing may be a more fundamental problem, but I don’t know why.
I don’t think it is quite correct to say that the ABL points down to engage. Rather, I think the standard scenario is that engagement does not begin until the missile clears cloud level, and it continues as the missile climbs to burnout at several hundred km altitude.
I agree that the ABL is kind of a Spruce Goose, but I think a bit more care is needed to show that.
20 kw of poor beam quality, and AO have not worked for high power ever. The geometric configuration is very large for six high power lasers if maximizing power is your goal. As far as pointing down, do the trig. For targets of interest, the plane points down. ABL crew knows this and have corrected their ABL posters although they don’t always show them. They do at the techie conferences. Hey and this does not even address the part about violating nature’s laws. Propagation on a horizontal path or slant path, encounters turbulence, we get phase to intensity, phase to intensity changes; a basketball sized beam at range, even up close is a joke. And what abl is your inferred beam quality?