AIRBORNE DIRECTED ENERGY TECHNOLOGY MATURING IN THE U.S.
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October 3, 2014
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SOURCE: STRAT RISKS
The U.S. Air Force is ready to “weaponize” and quickly
field directed-energy technology, following two recent successful high-power
microwave (HPM) demonstration programs. Progress is also being made with
solid-state high-energy lasers (HELs). Directed Energy was one of three
“game-changing” technologies discussed by Maj Gen Tom Masiello, the commander
of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), at the recent Air Force
Association (AFA) Conference in Washington, D.C. The others were
hypersonics and autonomy.
Masiello showed video from flight tests of the Boeing
counter-electronics, high-powered microwave, advanced-missile project (Champ)
on the Utah test range. He revealed that the Champ platform is a modified
Boeing AGM-86 air-launched cruise missile (ALCM), launched from a B-52. It
first flew in 2011, but Boeing revealed little
detail of the project then. Flights evidently continued through
Fiscal Year 2013, when the modified ALCM was successfully flown
against two target sets: an unhardened office building and a hardened
chemical/biological weapons (CBW) facility. “The computers in the office
building went blank, and an electrical generator was disabled on the first
pass,” Masiello reported. The HPM weapon “would also have destroyed
whatever batch of CBW was being manufactured in the [hardened]
facility,” he added.
A single HPM weapon could provide low-collateral
damage of multiple targets, Masiello noted. It was an alternative to the
kinetic means of defeating an emitting/electronic target, he added. The next
step would be to design, develop and test a multi-shot,
multi-target HPM cruise missile. “Two independent teams have
[validated] that the technology is ready to weaponize,” Masiello noted. This is
an apparent reference to the separate contract awarded to Lockheed Martin to
explore airborne HPM technology in the Non-Kinetic Counter Electronics
Capability (NKCE) program.
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