Space

Testing completed on ABL program laser module

Released: 22 Oct 1999

During a four-month long test program at TRW's Capistrano Test Site near here, the flight weighted laser module 3 exceeded the laser power and beam quality requirements for the operational ABL system.

Output power and beam quality are a measure of the laser's ability to put "energy on target" to destroy a boosting theater ballistic missile.

"We tested the FLM-3 under its full operating range, from conditions representing its first shot from a 'fresh' chemical magazine to conditions representing its last shot from a 'spent' magazine," explained TRW's ABL program manager Steve Toner.

"Under all test scenarios," Toner said, "the laser produced sufficient power to exceed, by a significant margin, the operational range requirements. We now know, with certainty, that our module design contains sufficient laser reactants to meet the ABL mission requirements while staying within the weight budget for the first system."

"The FLM-3 test results provide the latest evidence that the system design is solid and that we're on course to put this revolutionary weapon system in the air in 2003," said Col. Mike Booen, ABL program director at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.

According to Booen, ABL team successes, in defining and bringing the next generation ABL laser module on line in less than a year, are testament to the robust test program and maturity of the laser technology underpinning the ABL weapon system development.

Other significant characteristics of the test program, according to Toner, are that all the critical FLM-3 power and beam quality measurements were made under hot, high-pressure cavity conditions representative of the actual laser operating conditions.

"We made every effort to make these tests as realistic as possible," Toner said, "because we're using the test results to 'freeze' our design."

Completion of the testing paves the way for the team to finalize the design of the flight laser modules and begin manufacturing the first of six modules for the first Boeing 747-400-based ABL system.

The ABL team is in the third year of a $1.3 billion program definition and risk reduction contract with the Air Force Space and Missiles Systems Center to design, produce, integrate and flight test the first prototype ABL demonstration system. The contract is scheduled to culminate in 2003 with a boost-phase shoot-down of a theater ballistic missile.

The prototype aircraft, slated to roll out this winter from Boeing facilities in Everett, Wash., will be the first of a new kind of defensive system. It will use a high-energy chemical oxygen-iodine laser to shoot down attacking theater ballistic missiles launched hundreds of miles away.

The ABL engineering and manufacturing development program is scheduled to begin in 2004.