Missed Target

The Missile Defense Agency this morning released a statement giving more details on this month's failed Airborne Laser Test Bed intercept attempt. In a nutshell, it didn't aim where it was supposed to:

On Sept 1, 2010, the Missile Defense Agency executed the Flight Experiment Laser (FEL-01b) mission at the Point Mugu flight test range off the Southern California coast. The objective of this mission was for the Agency's Airborne Laser Test Bed (ALTB) to destroy a liquid-fuel, short-range ballistic missile during its boost phase. During the mission the Boeing 747 flying laser laboratory detected and tracked the target. However, the experiment terminated early when corrupted beam control software steered the high energy laser slightly off center.

While we continue analyzing the failure, preliminary indications are that a communication software error within the system that controls the laser beam caused misalignment of the beam. The ALTB safety system detected this shift and immediately shut down the high energy laser.

The Agency plans to resume flight experiments beginning with tests of the software repair on September 13 leading to a lethal shootdown experiment involving a solid-fuel target missile by the end of this month. A mid-October experiment is in the planning stages that will involve lasing a solid-fuel missile at three times the range of last February’s successful destruction of a liquid-fuel missile.

The test was the fourth attempt in recent weeks, with each try being delayed due to software or hardware issues with either the ALTB system or its target missile. As Inside the Pentagon reported yesterday:

The fourth intercept attempt was pushed back because of problems with the system's tracking laser, according to an Aug. 24 agency statement. In February, the ALTB program intercepted a missile at a distance greater than 50 miles.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recommended keeping the program in a research and development status because of its high cost and questionable operational concept. When the Obama administration's fiscal year 2011 defense budget was unveiled in February, Pentagon officials announced that the former Airborne Laser program was being transferred to the office of the director of defense research and engineering (DDR&E) and being renamed the ALTB.

During an Aug. 19 breakfast with reporters, Zachary Lemnios, the DDR&E, said his office views the Airborne Laser Test Bed as just that -- a test bed.

"We're looking at using that platform to validate other high-powered laser concepts," Lemnios said. "We have a number of projects underway at the energy labs and also funded through DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] and funded through the Air Force to look at high-powered solid state lasers that would offer similar performance as the enormous coil laser" that's on the Airborne Laser Test Bed.