The Airborne Laser (YAL-1A) Fact Sheet
The name: Airborne Laser (ABL).
The job: Provide boost-phase defense against a ballistic missile attack aimed at the United States, its allies, or American troops wherever they may be.
ABL -- a component in the Missile Defense Agency's plan to present a "layered defense" designed to destroy missiles in any of their three stages of flight -- is a revolutionary program using a laser as an actual weapon.
ABL's mission is straightforward: Detect, track, target, and kill threatening missiles, no matter if they are in the short-, medium-, or long-range class. It's the way this is done that makes the job such a challenge.
ABL is an amalgamation of technologies. There is the aircraft, a Boeing 747-400 freighter, a staple among long-distance carriers. There is the Chemical, Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL), which was invented at Kirtland Air Force Base in 1977. There is the heart of the optical system -- the "deformable" mirror -- which was developed at Kirtland's Starfire Optical Range as part of a secret operation more than a generation ago. And there are the infrared sensors which first were tested on the F-14 "Tomcat" fighter plane shortly before the first Gulf War.
However, these varied components have never been joined together in a single system and tested against a target as tough as a just-launched ballistic missile climbing upward at twice the speed of sound.
To accomplish its mission, ABL has to take a series of separate but well-defined steps. First, it has to know that a missile has been launched and determine where that missile is. ABL does this with infrared sensors that are located around the aircraft, one each in the front and rear and two on each side.
At that point, ABL's array of four lasers takes over. One locks onto the missile to provide detailed tracking information. Another deter-mines the aim point on the target. A third measures the amount of atmospheric disturbance between ABL and the target so computers and deformable mirrors can compensate for the amount of refraction the laser beam will encounter on its way to the target. Finally, the last laser -- the megawatt-class COIL -- will fire its killer ray.
COIL kills the missile by heating up the missile's metal skin until it cracks. Since the missile's interior is pressurized during launch, the crack rapidly expands into a tear and the released fuel explodes. .
As of late summer, 2003, portions of the ABL were still being built. The heavily modified aircraft made its first flight on July 18, 2002. Six months later, after 14 flights, the aircraft was rolled into a hangar at Edwards Air Force Base, California, where it is awaiting delivery of the other systems. The high-energy laser is being assembled in a separate hangar and scheduled to be tested late in 2003. Finishing touches also are being made on the optical system, which will then be shipped to Edwards to be installed in the aircraft.
After completion of ground testing, the ABL will fly as a complete system. After a series of tests to confirm the system's capabilities, ABL is scheduled to shoot down its first ballistic missile.
Many say that such an accomplishment -- because the use of a laser as a weapon is such a radical departure from the explosive-type weapons that have been used for centuries -- will signal the emergence of an entirely new type of warfare, one that will be as significant to aerial combat as the Wright brothers first flight or the development of nuclear weapons.
Airborne Laser System Program Office, Office of Public Affairs,
3300 Target Road, Building 760, Kirtland AFB, NM