PROGRAM BACKGROUND:
Once a nebulous concept in the collective imagination of a group of Air Force scientists, the world's first laser-armed combat aircraft stands today on the threshold of reality.

While there is still some twenty-four months of rigorous testing in the Airborne Laser's immediate future, the bulbous-nosed missile killer is about to take to the air for the first time. WhenYAL-1A, the prototype model for an eventual fleet of seven, lifts off the tarmac in Wichita, Kan., early next year it will bring to fruition a dream that began almost a quarter of a century ago.

Building on technology that flowed from a treatise published by Albert Einstein in 1917 that outlined the principles for producing a "stimulated" emission of light, the notion of using a laser for military applications was advanced in 1967 by Edward Teller, the world-renowned expert in thermonuclear energy. Then a member of the U.S. Air Force's Scientific Advisory Board, Teller envisioned a fleet of "aerial battleships" -- large aircraft armed with one or more high-powered lasers that could be used to blast enemy aircraft or the types of ground-to-air missiles that then were taking a heavy toll against American aircraft in Indochina.

Teller's idea caught on and designers began working on a project to field a laser-equipped aircraft. Initially, a KC-135A (similar to a Boeing 707) was chosen to be the platform for a carbon dioxide gas dynamic laser. Christened the Airborne Laser Laboratory (ALL), the specially modified aircraft shot down its first target -- a towed drone -- over the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on May 2, 1981. The event marked the first time a high-energy laser beam had ever been fired from an airborne aircraft. After considerable tweaking, the ALL was deemed ready to shoot at more challenging objects. Twenty-six months after it destroyed the drone, on July 26, 1983, the Air Force announced that the ALL had been used to shoot down five Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. It marked the apogee of the program although tests would not end until the ALL shot down yet another drone four months later. The aircraft was retired in 1984 and four years later was flown to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, where it is now on display at the Air Force Museum.

Despite its unqualified success, the ALL was ignored by weapons planners, mainly because its missions had been classified as "proof-of-concept" exhibitions rather than demonstrations of a viable warfighting tool. Although it had shown that a laser mounted on an aircraft could be a formidable defensive weapon, it was generally viewed as impractical. Its carbon dioxide laser was too bulky, it was dependent on an external power source, and it did not generate enough power to be effective at extended ranges. However, almost a decade later, after Saddam Hussein began firing theater ballistic missiles called Scuds at U.S. troops and their allies in the Persian Gulf War, and the concept of an anti-missile laser was revitalized.

By then, technological advances had dictated the replacement of ALL's gas dynamic laser with a vastly superior chemically operated device that had been invented at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. Called a Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL), it resolved many of the doubts planners had about the ALL system. A number of times more powerful than the ALL's gas dynamic laser, the COIL had an internal power source, it was much more compact, and it was capable of producing a lethal beam over long distances.

As a result, rather than reviving the ALL, the Air Force decided to build an entirely new system, changing not only the laser but the type of aircraft that would carry it . Plus, it got a brand new concept of operations. Dubbed the Airborne Laser (ABL), the new system would include multiple COIL modules (six in the prototype version; 14 in the manufacturing model) installed in pairs in the rear of a Boeing 747-400 freighter. Also, there would be one important new addition: a sophisticated optical system capable of projecting a beam over hundreds of kilometers and compensating for any atmospheric disturbances that might exist between the aircraft and its target.

In its early days, ABL was part of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) since one of SDI's goals was to study ways that directed energy could be used in a weapons system. The ideas ranged from the pragmatic to the fanciful, and it was not long before Congress put the brakes on those that touched on pure science fiction. In 1992, lawmakers directed SDI managers to shelve the programs that did not seem capable of being brought to fruition within 15 years. ABL, thanks no doubt to the ground-breaking work of the ALL, easily made the cut.

Despite early funding challenges the program managed to stay alive. On November 12, 1996, the Air Force awarded a $1.1 billion contract to Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to begin working on a prototype ABL that would detect, track, and destroy theater ballistic missiles during their boost phase.

Since the organization that supervised ABL's predecessor came under the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), ABL also became responsible to SMC, at least until the prototype model was completed. Once ABL had proved itself, it would transfer to the Aeronautical Systems Center (ASC), which oversees combat aircraft ranging from mighty bombers to lightning-swift fighters. The transition plan was accelerated in the summer of 2001 when the Air Force transferred SMC to its Space Command. Since ABL clearly was not a space-oriented system, it moved to ASC earlier than anticipated. Almost simultaneously, it also transferred to the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). In practice, ASC will be responsible for ABL's personnel and BMDO for program execution.

Despite the organizational changes, ABL remains focused exactly as it has been since the idea was conceived in the early Nineties. Its purpose is to destroy ballistic missiles during their boost phase, the period when they are moving on a relatively even, predictable path and, because of their pressurized fuel load, are particularly vulnerable.

December 5, 2001