DARPA Plans to Arm Drones With Missile-Blasting Lasers

reply to post by Bedlam


This is a different one then. The original jammer was just to blind seeker heads.

There definitely IS a project to do that. Heck, we are still getting nibbles on our 'plasma bloom chaff' trick.

But if you look up Endurance and Excalibur out of DARPA, it's a flying weenie roaster, with pretty terminology frosting.

reply to post by Bedlam


There are two or three blinding projects going on. Guardian is the farthest along, and closest to operational, with two or three others not far behind.

reply to post by Bedlam


The Yal-1 was cancelled in 2011. As of 1 year ago it sits in the Davis–Monthan Air Force Base bone yard. You can see it sitting out in the open on Google Earth so I'm guessing it has been stripped of anything useful. Shame really.

reply to post by Sammamishman


I saw it sitting out there the one time we went driving past the Boneyard. Couldn't see real detail about it though, mostly just saw the upper part of the aircraft.

reply to post by Zaphod58


I imagine it's probably gutted out. Nothing but the airframe left with chemicals drained and laser aperture head assembly taken to a less harsh environment.
With the advancements of solid state lasers now, I can't see the need for large scale chem. laser like that.

reply to post by Sammamishman


Not just that, but any kind of long range laser is going to have problems right now. There's a lot to have to overcome and we're not at that point yet.

Links Mirror Shield will come in handy!!

These lasers will be used against more than missiles...

reply to post by Sammamishman


YAL-1 is the ABL. What I'm talking about was the ATL. Similar but not identical.

Different airframe, different project office, different funding, somewhat diffrent laser setup. Different mission. But it's a laser on a plane from Boeing.

reply to post by Bedlam


Was that the NKC-135, or after it? I can never remember that program name, but I remember the aircraft. It had targets all over the side of it.

Zaphod58
reply to post by Bedlam

 

Was that the NKC-135, or after it? I can never remember that program name, but I remember the aircraft. It had targets all over the side of it.

Boeing built it in a C130H starting 2006, it was an L3/HYTEC/Boeing trifecta. Was out at Kirtland for a long time.

Last I saw they let a 30mil contract to test and eval, and not long after it dropped off the radar. No cancellation, no continuation, nada. I actually had forgotten about it until someone here at work made a comment on my naivete with regards to Endurance and dropped a mention of ATL into it, went and looked it up, and couldn't find where it went. Or if it died, or lived, or got renamed. Just nothing. Could be I'm just looking in the wrong places.

reply to post by Bedlam


Sorry about that...one letter off in an acronym makes a huge difference doesn't it.

The C-130 the ATL laser was mounted on is an NC-130H model, serial number: 65-0979.
As of 03/15/2012 (expires in 2015) the registered owner of the aircraft is NASA Goddard Space Flight ctr at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
If the laser is still mounted in the aircraft or not...who knows?

Aircraft pic.

FAA registration

65-0979 history

In case anyone is interested, I sent an email to NASA about the whereabouts of the C-130 that housed the ATL. NASA confirmed through a FOIA e-mail that the aircraft is still at the Goddard Space Flight Ctr at Wallops Is. VA.

Bedlam
Well, Zaphod, I think I was right on my first comment.

It's not just a seeker blinder. The Excalibur laser technology has a design goal of 100kW in a drone. And SORDAC is already looking at thumping the bucks down. DARPAs sales pitch for Excalibur came right out of the chute saying it was for counter-insurgency attacks in MOUT where you didn't want any collateral damage of the sort a nice missile would cause.

Isn't it less trouble to make a smaller missile?

reply to post by mbkennel


Probably...but with a DEW you never run out of ammo.

Sammamishman
In case anyone is interested, I sent an email to NASA about the whereabouts of the C-130 that housed the ATL. NASA confirmed through a FOIA e-mail that the aircraft is still at the Goddard Space Flight Ctr at Wallops Is. VA.

Wonder what the # NASA is doing with THAT.

Maybe they killed the project off and stripped out the laser. But I still can't find the end of the project documented anywhere. No one at my old digs will discuss it either. Either they don't know or ain't talking.

mbkennel
Isn't it less trouble to make a smaller missile?

Maybe. There's a new approach. A facial recognition missile.

I think the goal for ATL is to fry up the opposition at a distance. It's a terror weapon.

Now, if you could come up with one of those flying silver head-driller balls from Phantasm that was the sort of thing you could use as a person-specific standoff weapon, you could retire without being a physical chemist. I still need one!

Sammamishman
reply to post by mbkennel

 

Probably...but with a DEW you never run out of ammo.

I dunno, the ATL got about 10 shots if it was fully fueled. It wasn't a great design. A great concept, maybe.

Done as a drone with a solid state liquid cooled laser, maaaaaybe so.