Obviously, in twenty or thirty years, the Boeing-747-400F Freighter ("Air Truck"), equipped with an experienced laser aviation system ALTB (Airborne Laser Testbed), will be perceived the same way as we see the plane of the Wright brothers today - archaic and somewhere even ridiculous. But now it is the super-weapon of the future.
February 11 this year at 20 hours 44 minutes PST (at 07.44 on February 12 - Moscow time) a Boeing-747-400F with an ALTB system, taking off from the Point Mugu airfield at the US Naval Air Force Research Center in California, struck a powerful blow laser beam at the liquid-propellant ballistic missile and destroyed it. The target missile was launched from a kind of "mobile floating platform" off the west coast of the United States. With the help of infrared sensors installed on the aircraft, the launch of the rocket was detected, and a low-energy laser beam tracked the flight of the target in the acceleration section. With the help of a second low-power laser pulse, the state of the atmosphere on the "track" of firing was determined. The onboard computer of the "Air Truck" instantly calculated the parameters of the trajectory of the attacked object, took into account the data of atmospheric disturbances, made the appropriate adjustments to the aiming device and gave the command "fire". The high-energy laser beam hit and instantly heated the target missile to a high temperature, as a result of which it collapsed. This entire operation took less than two minutes.
February 11 this year at 20 hours 44 minutes PST (at 07.44 February 12 - Moscow time) a Boeing-747-400F with an ALTB system, taking off from the Point Mugu airfield at the US Naval Air Force Research Center in California, struck a powerful laser beam at the liquid-propellant ballistic missile and destroyed it. The target missile was launched from a kind of "mobile floating platform" off the west coast of the United States. With the help of infrared sensors installed on the aircraft, the launch of the rocket was detected, and a low-energy laser beam tracked the flight of the target in the acceleration section. With the help of a second low-power laser pulse, the state of the atmosphere on the "track" of firing was determined. The onboard computer of the "Air Truck" instantly calculated the parameters of the trajectory of the attacked object, took into account the data of atmospheric disturbances, made the appropriate adjustments to the aiming device and gave the command "fire". A high-energy laser beam hit and instantly heated the target missile to a high temperature, as a result of which it collapsed. This entire operation took less than two minutes.
Guidance and "launch" of the laser beam was carried out by a turret in the bow of the Boeing-747-400F. And the high-energy Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) of megawatt power and its ingredients occupy most of the fuselage of the huge "Air Truck". Above, just behind the cockpit, is a laser sighting and atmospheric reconnaissance system. Inside the vehicle, immediately behind the cockpit, there is a combat control compartment, where the operators work - the "crew" of the laser "cannon".
Commissioned by the Pentagon, the laser combat aircraft system was developed by a consortium of three major American military-industrial corporations: Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. General contractor Boeing supplied the Air Truck and acted as the integrator of the entire program. Northrop Grumman Corporation has developed and manufactured low-energy and high-energy chemical lasers. Lockheed Martin manufactured the beam guidance system and turret. In addition to the “three whales”, more than 30 American companies and organizations took part in the creation of ALTB.
An hour after the first "shot" ALTB was fired a second, no less successful. Now the laser was hitting a solid-propellant ballistic missile launched from San Nicholas Island off the coast of California. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) praised the test results. "The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defense, as it makes it possible to attack many objects at the speed of light at a distance of hundreds of kilometers," the agency said in a statement.
Indeed, the tests confirmed the readiness of the laser aviation system (Airborne Laser - ABL) to intercept ballistic missiles in the active phase of the trajectory. Moreover, they generally became a milestone in the development of weapons of warfare. This qualitative leap is on a par with the appearance of gunpowder-loaded guns and cannons, rifled guns, submarines, warplanes and missiles. Now, artillery and missiles in many areas will gradually be replaced by laser and other types of directed energy weapons. By 2015, the US Department of Defense intends to form a squadron of seven aircraft with ABL. It is assumed that they will be able to hit liquid-fueled missiles at ranges of up to 600 km, and solid-fueled missiles up to 300 km. Each such "Air Truck" with a laser "cannon" is capable of patrolling the airspace for 16 hours. In addition to performing anti-missile defense functions, they will successfully fight aircraft and cruise missiles, including those made in accordance with the requirements of stealth technologies. The cost of one such laser "flying fortress" will be approximately $ 1.5 billion.
Laser technology has been used for military purposes for several decades. Laser rangefinders and guidance systems are widely used. But with the "hyperboloid of engineer Garin" - combat ray systems - things were difficult to move forward. True, to date, several experimental combat systems have been created for aircraft, land and sea-based. Northrop Grumman Corporation has developed the Skyguard complex to repel attacks from multiple launch rocket systems. But he is still far from perfect. The Centurion system on solid-state lasers from Raytheon Corporation also needs improvement. It is intended to replace the Phalanx multi-barreled 20-mm anti-aircraft artillery defense systems on ships and in army units. However, the system showed good results on tests and, apparently, work on it will continue. Last year, Boeing and Raytheon were awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to develop another ship's defense system - using 100 kW free electron lasers.
Last November, Boeing successfully tested the MATRIX laser system at the China Lake test site in California. It is a mobile platform equipped with laser and radar. MATRIX spotted and shot down five unmanned aerial vehicles. In September 2009, an ATL (Airborne Tactical Laser) laser "cannon" installed on board a C-130H aircraft managed to hit a moving ground target.
The ABL air laser program described above began in 1994. However, success did not come immediately. The first aircraft was handed over to Boeing for testing in 2002. Hundreds of flights were performed to test and debug the complex's elements. It was only in 2008 that the developers installed a high-energy chemical laser on board the Air Truck. In August last year, a "rehearsal" of shooting exercises was held there. Then the rocket also launched from the island of San Nicolas. On a Boeing-747-400F, it was spotted, lasers were aimed and a low-power ABL beam was directed at the target. The sensors on the rocket recorded a "hit". The experiment was limited to this. And on February 11 this year, everything worked normally.
But there is a problem that worries the military and the creators of new weapons very much. Chemical lasers, although powerful, are bulky and complex units. Because of this, they are expensive and capricious. That is why, in the coming years, priority attention will be paid to the improvement of solid-state lasers. The Northrop Grumman corporation has made especially progress in this direction. Within the framework of the JHPSSL (Joint High-Powered Solid State Laser) program, she managed to develop a solid-state laser with a power of more than 100 kW. It is powered not by obtaining energy from the reaction of chemicals, which take up a lot of space and require special storage conditions, but by taking off the electricity generated by the engines of aircraft, combat vehicles and ships. According to the director of the US Army's laser weapons program, Brian Strickland, the power of the beam created with the help of electricity is sufficient to destroy targets on the battlefield.
The Northrop Grumman laser consists of circuits, each element of which emits a beam of energy with a power of more than 15 kW. The entire system consists of eight laser circuits with four amplification modules each. Thus, the total power of JHPSSL reaches 105 kW.
The advantages of this arrangement are its rather compact size and the ability to generate a powerful focused beam for a long time without deteriorating its quality. The laser is planned to be used to protect stationary objects, mobile military units, ships, aircraft and helicopters, as well as to deliver high-precision strikes against the enemy from various types of ground, air and sea platforms.
The US Navy has shown a particularly keen interest in the brainchild of Northrop Grumman. They signed a $ 98 million contract with the corporation to create a prototype of a sea-based laser MLD (Maritime Laser Demonstration). If it is successfully tested, which few doubt, it is planned to equip aircraft carriers, destroyers, littoral and landing ships with similar installations.
Boeing is also experimenting with solid-state combat lasers. It won a $ 36 million contract with the US Department of Defense to develop a High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator (HEL TD) mobile laser device. This laser is supposed to be mounted on the basis of a four-axle HEMTT off-road truck. Its main purpose will be the destruction of missiles, artillery shells and mortar ammunition of the enemy on the battlefield.
Unfortunately, in our country, work on combat lasers and other types of directed energy weapons is not a priority. But in the 70-80s. of the last century, the Soviet Union, according to foreign experts, was significantly ahead of the United States and other Western countries in this area. High-power land, air and sea-based lasers were created. According to Yuri Zaitsev, advisor to the Academy of Engineering Sciences of the Russian Federation, already in 1972, "a mobile" laser cannon "quite successfully hit air targets." In 1977, the OKB im. Beriev began to create on the basis of the Il-76MD flying laboratory A-60 to study the propagation of laser beams in the upper atmosphere. This aircraft took off for the first time in August 1981. A combat laser was tested on the A-60. He was the forerunner of the American ABL. After the collapse of the USSR, work on this program was discontinued.
At the Sary-Shagan training ground in the Betpak-Dala desert in Kazakhstan, high-power lasers were tested for the country's strategic anti-missile defense under the Terra and Omega programs. The experimental facilities used different laser systems and different systems for pumping the working media. On October 10, 1984, one of Sary-Shagan's lasers hit the American spacecraft Challenger with its beam, which caused malfunctions in the activity of its onboard systems and complaints from the crew about unpleasant sensations. In this regard, Washington even sent a protest to Moscow. But all this is in the distant past. Although Sary-Shagan is formally subordinate to the 4th State Central Inter-Service Testing Ground of the Strategic Missile Forces, nothing has been tested there for a long time. And its objects have turned into a dump of construction waste, where local "stalkers" for a reasonable fee take fans of extreme tourism on excursions. Last summer, the last and by that time the only checkpoint at the entrance to the landfill was closed in Sary-Shagan.
