Three years after the Missile Defense Agency mothballed its massive Airborne Laser, MDA is planning to reboot the concept for a new era.
The old ABL was Boeing 747 with a human crew and tanks of toxic chemicals to generate power. The new idea a high-altitude, long-endurance drone armed with a more compact electrically powered laser. But the technical and tactical challenge remains the same: building a laser-armed aircraft that can shoot down ballistic missiles at their most vulnerable, just after launch, without having to fly so close it gets shot down itself.
“The problem with boost phase is…you’ve got to get close enough,” Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s procurement chief, told reporters at the Space & Missile Defense conference here. By closing in, he said, “you get a softer target: The booster, the rocket itself, is a lot softer than the reentry vehicles.” But if you’re close enough to shoot at a rocket right after it launches from enemy territory, you’re probably close enough for the enemy to shoot you.
READ: Breaking Defense