WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 (UPI) -- Boeing and the U.S. Air Force say they have achieved major progress in the development of a system to use mirrors to shoot laser beams at missiles.
In a statement Monday, Boeing said it and the Air Force had successfully redirected a laser beam to a target using their Aerospace Relay Mirror System, or ARMS.
The demonstration, conducted recently at U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory facilities at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., used a half-scale version of a system that ultimately could be packaged and carried to high altitudes on airships, long-endurance aircraft or spacecraft, Boeing said.
The payload could be used with airborne, ground-based or sea-based high-energy lasers to destroy ballistic missiles and other targets. Relay mirror systems will greatly enhance laser weapon system performance by reducing the atmosphere's effects on laser beams and extending their range beyond line of sight, the company said.
"This demonstration is a major step in the development of relay technology because it shows that a relay mirror system can receive laser energy and redirect it to a target, extending the laser's range," said Pat Shanahan, vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems.
During the demonstration, Boeing suspended the 15-foot-high ARMS hardware 100 feet above the ground using a mechanical crane. Testers fired a low-power, sub-kilowatt-class ground laser from several miles away at one of the ARMS payload's two 75-centimeter mirrors. The other mirror relayed the non-lethal beam to a ground-based target board about two miles away from the ARMS.
Boeing began its ARMS work four years ago under a $20 million Air Force contract. Now that the work is completed, the Air Force plans to use the ARMS hardware to establish a permanent test bed for relay system technology development.
Boeing Missile Defense Systems conducts its relay system work through its Directed Energy Systems unit, formerly called Laser & Electro-Optical Systems.
General still hopeful on Trident funding
The head of U.S. Strategic Command, Gen. James Cartwright, anticipates Congress will consider releasing additional funds for a new, conventionally armed Trident D-5 missile next year, once studies are done that show the weapon can be used with little risk of provoking nuclear retaliation.
His comments, offered in an interview last week with InsideDefense.com, came in the wake of congressional action that may leave the Navy's proposed Conventional Trident Modification, or CTM, effort with just a fraction of the $127 million the Defense Department requested for fiscal year 2007, InsideDefense.com said.
The U.S. Senate last week deferred a vote on its 2007 defense appropriations bill that provides no Fiscal Year 2007 funds to develop CTM, but offers $5 million to conduct a study on potential land- or air-based alternatives to the submarine-launched missile.
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that would appropriate $30 million for CTM for the coming fiscal year, or less than one-quarter of the funds sought. The two chambers' bills are expected to be reconciled in conference committee in the coming months.
All four key defense committees on Capitol Hill have expressed concern that the launch of a conventionally armed D-5 from a submarine that also carries the nuclear-tipped version of the same missile could prompt international misinterpretation that some experts say might lead to hasty retaliation against the United States, InsideDefense.com said.
Russia test fires another Topol
Russia has successfully test launched an intercontinental ballistic missile from its northern space-vehicle launching site, Plesetsk, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported Aug. 3
The intercontinental Topol class ballistic missile, also known in the West as the CC-25, was launched on Aug. 3 at 1:38 p.m. Moscow time from a mobile launching installation, sources from the northern cosmodrome told ITAR-TASS.
The aim of the test was to assure that the exploitation period of the missile could be extended, a Russian space forces' press-service representative told Regions.ru online daily.
The flight of the missile was strictly controlled by Russian space force devices. The launch and the flight of Topol have met all necessary standards. At the scheduled time the missile hit its target situated on the exercise polygon on the Kamchtaka Peninsula.
The RT-2PM Topol is a mobile intercontinental ballistic missile designed in the Soviet Union in 1970 and is still used in Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces. The first tests of the missile were conducted in 1981. Full deployment of 360 missiles was achieved in 1996, and as of 2005, 300 remain on duty. Ballistic missiles are typically designed for nuclear weapons delivery.
The Topol is a road mobile 3-stage, single warhead missile. It weights 2,200 pounds and can deliver a single warhead over a range of 6,300 miles with an accuracy of just over half a mile, according to Russian sources.
More than 500 intercontinental ballistic missiles, including 80 Topols, have been launched from the cosmodrome Plesetsk since it has been in operation. More than 1550 carrier rockets have been launched, 60 types of spacecraft tested, and over 38 percent of the worlds' spacecraft put into the orbit from the Plesetsk cosmodrome.
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