It is called the airborne laser system and unfortunately it is not likely to be well funded this year.
One reason that it and the airborne laser were shot down was that military planners fell out of love with chemical lasers.
So, for example, having an operational Airborne Laser system and a ground based system give the sea based interceptor more timely and accurate information with which to do its job.
The bottom line is simple: No other nation on earth capable of fielding the Airborne Laser, the F-22 and the other advanced weapons now on the Obama administration's chopping block would willingly abandon them.
Yet, at the same time, he and President Obama are insisting that we can safely do without fourteen more long-range missile interceptors, a second airborne laser and various other enhancements to our relatively rudimentary anti-missile deployments.
The Airborne Laser program is a direct descendent of Ronald Reagan's visionary Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), with its exploration of various means of intercepting and destroying ballistic missiles - including lasers and other "directed energy" techniques.
Unless Mr. Obama swiftly orders the Pentagon to change course on the remarkable Airborne Laser Test Bed (ALTB) program, however, his legacy on defense preparedness will be one of empty rhetoric and increased danger for our country.
The effective cashiering of the Airborne Laser fits a pattern of Obama defense procurement decisions with respect to advanced weaponry that is needed to provide our forces the qualitative edge upon which their mission success - and perhaps their lives and ours - may depend.
Casualties include a scale-back of the Airborne Laser program to enable enemy missile interceptions during their early launch phase, along with the elimination of the Multiple Kill Vehicle and Kinetic Energy Interceptor which uses small warheads on a single rocket to handle decoys and offer a better chance of success.
This included a scale-back of the Airborne Laser program to enable enemy missile interceptions during their early launch phase, along with the elimination of the Multiple Kill Vehicle and Kinetic Energy Interceptor which uses small warheads on a single rocket to handle decoys and offer a better chance of success.
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At a time when the Obama administration is rushing anti-missile defenses systems to the Persian Gulf in the face of intensifying regional concerns about Iran's ballistic missiles, one could be forgiven for thinking that every effort would be made to bring to bear the Airborne Laser system's ability to perform boost-phase intercepts.
The suggestions that the United States has no need for a kinetic-kill ASAT capability for "the next decade or two" and that there are alternatives that already exist for negating or disrupting enemy space activities, such as destroying ground stations or jamming links, would also appear to rule out the use of the Airborne Laser program for anti-satellite purposes.
This is especially deplorable since there is no more cost- or militarily effective way to perform boost-phase intercepts on a global basis than from space. (An interim capability provided by the Airborne Laser should be developed and validated as rapidly as technical considerations will permit.) In the absence of strong executive branch leadership on the matter, Congress has not provided the support space-based missile defenses deserve.
The flights will be conducted by a DC-8 outfitted as a special airborne laboratory with laser mapping instruments, ice-penetrating radar and gravity instruments.
Companies that have spent many years developing airborne self-protection laser systems like Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems say some of their competitors for the contract are latecomers to that business who may not fully grasp the challenge of dealing with emerging dangers or integrating laser equipment with all the other systems installed on Army helicopters.
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