ABL: A Swiss Army knife?

With a few upgrades, the program office believes ABL could expand its capabilities. For example, with upgrades now in progress for its acquisition, tracking and wave front- control hardware and software, ABL could engage longer-range threats such as ICBMs.

Continuing current efforts to upgrade acquisition and tracking sensors and software would allow ABL to track post-engagement debris, providing information to terminal defenses and warnings to friendly locations.

Upgrades to sensors, battle management and tracking software would allow ABL not only to defend itself, but other high-value airborne assets against Surface-to-Air missiles (SAMS), AAMs, and threat aircraft.

By upgrading the acquisition sensor and software ABL could also defend against high altitude cruise missiles. The future could also see ABL offer "a degree of capability" to destroy low-flying cruise missiles, leveraging ABL's speed-of-light capability to respond to time-sensitive targets. Other things ABL could do would be to positively identify potential airborne threats hundreds of miles away by redesigning its active ranging system (ARS); serve as an additional Electronic Support Measures (ESM) platform with some hardware and software modifications and weight reduction; and perform as a communications relay node with some upgrades, to leverage its planned operational altitude and long loiter times.