Zapping things from the sky: Airborne Boeing laser blasts ground target

According to Boeing, the C-130 fired its 12,000lb high-powerchemical laser through the beam control system while flying over White Sands Missile Range, N.M. The beam control system acquired theground target and guided the laser beam to the target.

The ATL team includes L-3 Communications/Brashear, whichmade the laser turret, and Hytec which made various structural elements of theweapon system, Boeing said.

The ATL is complementary to the Airborne Laser (ABL), whichBoeing is developing for the US Missile Defense Agency to destroy airborneballistic missiles. The ABL consists of a megawatt-class chemical laser mountedon a Boeing 747-400 freighter aircraft. According to Boeing the C-130Htransport, which belongs to the U.S. Air Force's 46th Test Wing, has beenmodified to carry the high-energy chemical laser and battle management and beamcontrol subsystems.

Both systems employ a Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL)that is made by combining a bunch of nasty chemicals - potassium, peroxide,chlorine, iodine and other stuff and then fired at supersonic speeds. Accordingto as post on Wikipedia, each COIL burst produces enough energy in afive-second burst to power a typical American household for more than one hour.The system doesn't so much evaporate its target as melts or damages itrendering it useless. In the case of using it against missiles, the missile istypically weakened and then explodes, experts said.

The extreme scientists at the Defense Advanced ResearchProjects Agency today said last month they want to develop a laser system thegoes way beyond today's opto-mechanical, acousto-optical or electro-opticalsystems to establish photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology that willprovide video frame rate beam steering speeds, and emit multiple beams with atotal output power of 10 W.

DARPA said Opto-mechanical scanning devices are usuallybulky and relatively slow, while acousto- and electro-optical technologiesutilize devices that while small in size, cannot provide the steering speedsand versatility necessary for many of the advanced applications the militaryenvisions.

Known as the SWEEPER, which is wicked short for short-rangewide-field-of-view extremely-agile electronically-steered photonic emitters,DARPA said it expects the new laser technology to draw from phased arrayconcepts that revolutionized RADAR systems.

DARPA said it expects SWEEPER will provide a compact, agilealternative to mechanically steered technology, and recognizing the recentadvances in photonic device density, circuit complexity, and performancecapabilities in the emerging PIC technology, the SWEEPER program should extendphased array beam steering to the optical domain in the near infra red (0.8 to2 μm range) by developing PIC technology for optical phased arrays. Such arrayswill require the integration of thousand of closely packed optical emittingfacets, precise relative electronic phase control of these components, and allwithin a very small form factor with a total output power of 10W, DARPA stated.