Airborne Laser faces ‘do-or-die’ tests

A gleaming new 747 jumbo jet sits inside a cramped hangar, the revolving turret on its nose a clear sign the plane won’t be hauling tourists on long-distance flights. Instead, dozens of technicians are outfitting it with a sophisticated array of lasers designed to shoot down ballistic missiles from hundreds of miles away shortly after they lift off.

Program managers insist the Airborne Laser, or ABL, “will be as revolutionary to warfare as the advent of the atomic bomb” on the day it works. A growing number of critics argue that day will never come.

Of the many pieces of the Bush administration’s plans for a layered missile defense, none has proved as technically challenging as the ABL. None has fallen as chronically behind schedule or seen its estimated costs double — to $5.1?|billion and rising — with so little progress. And none has been as harshly criticized.
“The program has never really ?e had a fundamental physics and chemistry understanding of how those systems will behave under combat conditions,” said Philip Coyle, the Pentagon’s former director of weapons testing and evaluation. “They are way out in front of their headlights in terms of trying to deploy something in an aircraft before they really understand the technology.”

Program analysts at the Pentagon interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel said they tried unsuccessfully to cancel the project every year from 1998 to 2001, only to have it kept alive by senior Defense Department officials. After the Bush administration took office, ABL was one of several programs exempted from traditional Pentagon oversight in 2002.

Although the project survived, the Pentagon’s initial plans for seven planes have shrunk to one, with an order for a second jet delayed. The program was restructured in February, and a planned test facility at Edwards was put on hold. Even so, a May report by the independent General Accounting Office continued to question not only ABL’s progress and cost but also its military usefulness.

Now, eight years after the program officially began, the project is at a crossroads. It faces two critical tests during the next three months that many have characterized as “do or die.” There is shrinking optimism outside the program — particularly on Capitol Hill — that the tests will succeed. If they don’t, congressional sources in both parties say, the program likely will be radically scaled back or killed by the end of 2005.

“I do believe the team I’ve got will make this weapons system work,” said Air Force Col. Ellen Pawlikowski, ABL’s program director. “My personal challenge is to give the team enough resources and allow them to stay focused to do it in time to keep our decision makers satisfied.”
Huge challenges

The idea of putting a laser on an airplane to destroy missiles dates to the 1970s. An Air Force cargo jet equipped with an experimental laser system shot down an unmanned drone and Sidewinder missiles during tests that ended in 1983. Dubbed the Airborne Laser Laboratory, the project was abandoned largely because its laser was too bulky and its lethal range too short. Twenty years later, similar issues, along with a host of new ones, are dogging the ABL program.

If the ABL becomes a reality, the plane will fly figure-eight patrols at 40,000 feet near hostile countries, such as North Korea.

Six heat-detecting infrared sensors on the jet’s exterior will search in all directions for telltale signs of a missile’s launch or exhaust plume. When a launch is spotted, the sensors and a ranging laser atop the jet will relay the data to a tracking laser that targets a spot just below the missile’s nose.

Next, another laser bounces a beam off the missile to measure the atmospheric distortion between the plane and the target. A complex set of flexible mirrors adjusts to compensate for the distortion. Then, a megawatt-class chemical laser fires a three-second or so beam.

“It essentially heats up the pressurized fuel tank of the missile, causing it to burst,” said Scott Fancher, ABL program manager for prime contractor Boeing.
Most of ABL’s exotic technologies already have been proved in pristine, controlled laboratory conditions. But moving them out of the laboratory and into a real-world weapons system has proved to be an engineering nightmare.

Engineers still are developing the 3?|million lines of incredibly complicated computer code for the software that operates the system. And six large chemical-laser modules must be seamlessly linked together to produce enough power. Just fitting all of the systems into the plane is a huge challenge.

Each of the jet’s dozens of lenses and mirrors must be perfectly aligned as lasers are fired and routed throughout the aircraft. A slight misalignment not only could disable the laser but could prove catastrophic for the plane and its crew of six to eight people.

Clouds of exhaust from the chemical laser will spew from the plane’s belly during flight. The exhaust contributes to a phenomenon called “jitter” — vibrations the jet encounters while flying and operating its systems — that makes it tough to keep the chemical laser focused on targets hundreds of miles away. Jitter is considered the biggest technical threat facing ABL.

“Unfortunately, it’s one of the few risks that will be with us all the way through the program, and we’ve been very upfront with our supporters about that,” Fancher said. “You don’t know the airborne environment until you fly in it with the configured weapons system.”

A practical defense?

With no actual flight tests to measure jitter, engineers are using computer models to check their designs and minimize the problem. Models also are being employed to determine whether the chemical laser’s estimated power output and range, a classified distance reportedly about 400 miles, are realistic.

Precipitation or clouds could significantly reduce that range. To increase ABL’s effectiveness, engineers have discussed such far-out ideas as bouncing the laser off a mirror on a blimp to minimize atmospheric interference. Critics say those sorts of schemes show just how desperate the program has gotten.
The May report by the independent GAO indicates that many fundamental questions about the system won’t be answered anytime soon.

“Predictions of the military utility of the initial ABL aircraft are still highly uncertain because these forecasts are not based on any demonstrated capability of the system but rather on modeling, simulations and analysis,” the report said.

As a huge, highly visible target, ABL would require extensive protection and support by other aircraft while patrolling, at a cost as high as $92,000 per hour. The jet also must periodically return to its base for fuel, maintenance and huge quantities of chemicals needed to keep the lasers working. That means at least three planes would be required for around-the-clock protection, or an enemy could simply wait until the jet landed to launch missiles.

The future

ABL’s development costs have more than doubled from an original estimate of $2.2 billion to a projected $5.1 billion through 2009. When the program began in 1996, ABL was scheduled to shoot down its first missile by 2002 and have an operational aircraft flying by 2006. Now, the missile engagements aren’t likely to happen before 2006 at the earliest.

Program managers face two critical hurdles by the end of the year. The six chemical-laser modules must be linked up to generate the power needed to kill a missile. Long-delayed ground tests are scheduled for November or December.

If the laser works and checks out over a several-month period, it would be moved to ABL by the end of 2005.

Engineers already are installing the targeting lasers aboard ABL. Flight tests are planned before January to see whether the plane’s beam control and fire control behave the same in the air as on the ground.

“We basically told the contractors they had to achieve those milestones or their future would be uncertain with respect to the continuation and scope of the program,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency. “That has been a key to why in the last several months they have made remarkable progress.”

One thing seems certain: ABL will be remembered either as one of the most spectacular breakthroughs or one of the biggest boondoggles in Pentagon history. Many experts, including some in the Pentagon, have little doubt which legacy it will be.

“To my knowledge, this is one of the biggest turkeys the Defense Department has ever embarked on,” said a senior Pentagon analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “There have been others, but this is way up there.”

Michael Cabbage can be reached ?oat mcabbage@orlandosentinel.com?o or 321-639-0522.

Originally Published: October 19, 2004 at 3:00 AM EDT