The Integrated Test Force - Where It All Comes Together
Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico
Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico may be the home of the Airborne Laser (ABL) -- the place where the first plans for a combat aircraft armed with a high energy laser were drawn up and where many of its scientists, engineers, contract officers, and document producers continue to work -- but all the action is far to the west, at Edwards Air Force Base 100 miles north of Los Angeles on the edge of the baking Mojave Desert.
Long recognized as the U.S. Air Force's premier center for testing new aircraft, Edwards is the ideal place to put the ABL through its paces. Also, Edwards is large, relatively flat, and isolated -- a fitting habitat for ABL which requires a lot of space, not only for ABL's 228-foot-long, highly modified Boeing 747-400 Freighter (43 inches longer than the commercial model because of the nose turret), but for a wide array of support facilities.
The ITF facility at Edwards is actually a six-building complex dedicated to readying the ABL for its boost-phase role in the United States' multi-layered missile defense system. The ITF will be where the components that make up the weapon system will be ground tested and then assembled on board the ABL aircraft, designated the prototYpe Attack Laser model 1-A (YAL-1A). Although Edwards sprawls over a huge chunk of real estate made remarkable by its large population of Joshua trees, ABL's facilities are concentrated primarily at South Base, behind the towering chain link fences of the Birk Flight Test Facility.
Aside from the huge hangar that houses YAL-1A, the ITF's most significant structure may be the 18,000 square-foot System Integration Laboratory (SIL). Inside and sticking out each end of the tin-roofed building is a 747-200 fuselage rescued from an aircraft junkyard. Although a different model from YAL-1A, the interior of the --200 is of almost equal size. This means that ABL's high-energy beam producer -- a Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) -- can be installed and tested there under realistic conditions.
In the spring of 2002, ABL engineers began building the COIL's six modules inside the fuselage. All six will be fired as a unit and tested extensively before they are taken apart and put back together inside YAL-1A.
Adjacent to the SIL on the west is a 6,000-square-foot metal-working shop where ABL equipment can be fabricated or repaired. And on the east is the 11-story-tall Ground Pressure Recovery Assembly (GPRA), an airtight, 350,000-cubic foot sphere more than 1½ times the volume of the Goodyear blimp. The GPRA is vital because the high-energy laser was designed to operate in flight where air pressure is much less than on the ground. Because the GPRA simulates the pressure at high-altitude for the laser and collects the laser exhaust, it can operate at ground level.
The only component not within the Birk compound is the Integrated Maintenance Facility (IMF), a two-building unit for storing and mixing the chemicals needed to operate the COIL. Located on the fringe of Rogers Dry Lake bed and a five-minute drive from Birk, the IMF is composed of two buildings totaling 19,000 square feet. One will be used to store the bulk chemicals that make up the ABL-specific compounds; the other will be where the actual mixing takes place.
While YAL-1A and the laser modules were the initial pieces of hardware on site at Edwards, the ABL's intricate optical system will be delivered from the Lockheed Martin facility in Sunnyvale, Calif. Although the optics will be tested in the Lockheed clean room before being disassembled and transported south, they will be ground tested yet again at Edwards once they have been installed in YAL-1A.
During the flight test period leading up to ABL's "graduation" exercise -- shooting down a ballistic missile off the California coast -- Edwards will be the base for extensive ground testing that will include all ABL lasers including the Active Ranging System (ARS), the Beacon Illuminator Laser (BILL) and the Target Illuminator Laser (TILL). The powerful COIL will also be fired into a closed test stand during ground tests after being installed on YAL-1A, again with the help of the GPRA. But there will be no open-air testing of the high energy laser. In addition, engineers will use a low-power substitute for the COIL called a Surrogate High Energy Laser (SHEL) for ground and flight tests.