Congress Wants To Resurrect Laser-Wielding 747

Harperdog writes "Noah Schactman has a great piece on the Airborne Laser, the ray gun-equipped 747 that became a symbol of wasteful Pentagon weaponeering. Despite sixteen years and billions of dollars in development, the jet could never reliably blast a missile in trials. Now the House Armed Services Committee's Strategic Forces wants the Airborne Laser to be used to defend us against the threat of North Korea's failed missiles."

Re:what better...

[lgw]

Eveyone always complains abut missile defense, and like all military-industrial-complex spending, it's full of bloat and corruption. But we still need missile defense - more and smaller powers are getting 50-year-old missile technology now.

Missile defense is hard. The airborn laser approach is a good and useful one, IMO, because of the psychological deterrent effect of shooting down enemy missiles while they're still boosting (ideally, while the folks who launched them can still see them). After all, the best way to win any war is to convinve the enemy that attacking you would be just insane and certain to fail (ideally before any shots are fired, but failing that, when the first shots are fired), and they shouldn't even try.

We should certainly do something like this. Do we need to roll the dice again; to try a different group of consultants, engineering companies, and pork-harvesters, in the hope that the new group will be less corrupt and actually deliver something workable? Definitely.

APS Study Found These Systems Lacking

[internic]

I remember that the American Physical Society (the professional organization of physicists) studied various boost-phase missile defense schemes years ago. They found that the various options, including air-borne lasers, weren't likely to be very useful in realistic scenarios (even under otherwise optimistic assumptions).

The press release says [aps.org]:

The Airborne Laser currently in development has the potential to intercept liquid-propellant ICBMs, but its range would be limited and it would therefore be vulnerable to counterattack. The Airborne Laser would not be able to disable solid-propellant ICBMs at ranges useful for defending the United States.

Few of the components exist for deploying an effective boost-phase defense against liquid-propellant ICBMs and some essential components would take at least 10 years to develop, said Study Group co-chair Daniel Kleppner. According to U.S. intelligence estimates, North Korea and Iran could develop or acquire solid-propellant ICBMs within the next 10 to 15 years. Consequently, a boost-phase defense effective only against liquid-propellant ICBMs would risk being obsolete when deployed.

You can also read the full report [aps.org]. I don't know how the relative states of the technologies stand today.

Re:what better...

[flyingsquid]

There are a number of glaring problems with the idea of using an airborne laser for defense against ballistic missiles. One of them is the whole "airborne" part. Providing continuous coverage against North Korea's missiles would require keeping a plane in the air continuously, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year... that's not impossible but it would be logistically challenging and very expensive to fly multiple sorties per day. The other issue is the limited range of the system. According to the Wikipedia article on the subject, thin-skinned liquid-fueled ICBMS might be vulnerable from 600 km away but you would need to be within 300 km to be assured of taking out a solid-fueled ICBM. That means you would probably need several aircraft in the air at the same time to cover North Korea completely, and you wouldn't be able to take out a solid-fueled ICBM fired from central Iran, unless you actually entered Iranian airspace. Overall the airborne laser seems thoroughly useless as a defence against ICBMS.

Re:"cluser" means easy

[f3rret]

(and thousands of warheads if we're talking about Russia, China or US but not Korea and other small countries which probably haven't mastered MIRV yet).

At least according the Wikipedia China is estimated to have between 180 and 240 nuclear warheads.
China don't do the MAD thing, their doctrine is set up to work by the Minimal Deterrence thing.