Tactical High Energy Laser
THEL laser n radar sys was designed to track up to sixty targets
(mortar n artillery shells, rockets) at a time. Fire on n destroy
these projectiles at a range of up to five km. THEL can destroy
about a dozen targets a minute, at a cost of some $3,000US per
shot. Each THEL sys (radar n laser) could cover about ten km of
border.
Northrop Grumman now says that it can have an anti-rocket sys ready
in 18 mths, at a development cost of $400 million. Each anti-rocket
sys would cost about $50US million.
The Israeli Defense Ministry declined to elaborate on the test
or the exact range of the intercepted missile. However, Pam Rogers,
a U.S. Army spokeswoman in Huntsville, Ala., said the deuterium
fluoride chemical laser destroyed an 11-foot-long, 6-inch-diameter
(3.3-meter long, 15-centimeter-diameter) rocket.
In earlier tests the Nautilus laser had successfully eliminated 28
short-range Katyusha rockets and five artillery shells in flight as
well as several hostile objects on the ground.
Northrop Grumman could deliver a mobile prototype by 2007
or 2008 if it gets a contract this summer, company
spokesman Bob Bishop said from Redondo Beach, Calif. The project
appears in the U.S. defense budget for fiscal 2004 with a $56
million allocation, he said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4926840
Skyguard Laser Air Defense System
Northrop Grumman unveiled its Skyguard laser-based air defense
system yesterday offering near-term defense against short-range
ballistic missiles, short- and long-range rockets, artillery
shells, mortars, unmanned aerial vehicles and cruise missiles.
Derived from the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL), one Skyguard
system is capable of establishing a protective shield roughly 10
kilometres in diameter over an airport, military installation,
small city or deployed forces.
Skyguard has higher power than heritage systems and a larger beam,
making it a much more capable system, the company said.
The Bush administration is seeking to develop a powerful
ground-based laser weapon that would use beams of
concentrated light to destroy enemy satellites in orbit.
The largely secret project, parts of which have been made public
through U.S. Air Force budget documents submitted to Congress in
February, is part of a wide-ranging effort to develop space
weapons, both defensive and offensive. No treaty or law forbids
such work.
In 1997, the U.S. military fired a ground-based laser in New Mexico
at a U.S. spacecraft, calling it a test of satellite vulnerability.
Federal experts said recently that the laser had had no capability
to do atmospheric compensation and that the test had failed to do
any damage.
Little else happened until January 2001, when a commission led by
Donald Rumsfeld, then the newly nominated defense secretary, warned
that the U.S. military faced a potential Pearl Harbor in space and
called for a defensive arsenal of space weapons.
The Starfire researchers are now investigating how to use guide
stars and flexible mirrors in conjunction with powerful lasers that
could flash their beams into space to knock out enemy satellites,
according to federal officials and air force budget
documents.
The research centers on Starfire's largest telescope. Its main
mirror can gather in faint starlight or, working in the opposite
direction, direct powerful beams of laser light skyward.
Air force budget documents call the telescope a "weapon-class beam
director." Unclassified pictures of Starfire in action show a
pencil-thin laser beam shooting up from its hilltop observatory
into the night sky.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/03/news/space.php
