The Airborne Laser program capped a successful year by recently achieving its final 2007 milestone, prime contractor Boeing announced. ABL teammate Northrop Grumman completed inspection and refurbishment of the high-energy laser components that were previously tested successfully in a system integration laboratory at Edwards AFB, Calif. Together with Boeing, Northrop also completed all technical drawings for the laser’s installation on the host 747-400F aircraft, incorporating improvements learned during the laboratory tests. These two activities together constituted the fifth and final of the Missile Defense Agency’s “knowledge points” or goals for ABL in 2007. “These achievements represent outstanding progress toward providing our nation with a mobile, speed-of-light capability to attack ballistic missiles during their boost phase,” Alexis Livanos, president of Northrop’s Space Technology sector, said in the company’s Jan. 3 release. The ABL team now is integrating the high-energy laser on the 747 and plans an extensive series of system-level ground and flight tests before attempting the first lethal shootdown of an in-flight test ballistic missile in 2009. Congress, however, remains somewhat skeptical of the program technological maturity, stripping $35 million from the program in 2008 defense policy bill and requesting an independent review.
More USAF ‘Operational Imperatives’ Likely Coming
Aug. 11, 2022
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall distilled the top fighting priorities of the Air Force and Space Force into seven “operational imperatives” chiefly as a mechanism to identify the spending transitions needed in the fiscal 2023 budget. But they are likely to persist, and more—on electronic warfare, cyber, and munitions—may be…