Frank Gaffney: Why not the best? (Airborne Laser)

The following paragraph from Frank Gaffney sums up the Obama Administration course they have set for the Defense Department. A laser system that works today that Democrats made fun of when President Reagan first introduced the concept is not going to be considered a weapon system by this Administration according to the FY11 Defense Budget.

Far from contemplating the early deployment of the ALTB, the Fiscal Year 2011 defense budget recently submitted to Congress by the Obama administration eliminates any further preparation of the platform as a weapon system. It will be confined, instead, to development and testing of laser technologies.

"Why not make ALTB a weapon system?" should be the first question members of Congress asks this Administration. Read the details from Gaffney and then contact your Congressman and two Senators and ask why this Airborne Laser Test Bed (ALTB) program is not being considered a new weapon system. We would like to know which members of Congres intend to walk in lockstep with the Obama Administration on this.

Frank Gaffney: Why not the best?
Feb 15, 2009
Center for Security Policy

For years, presidents of both parties have pledged to ensure that America fields a military second to none. A successful test last week of a truly transformative technology affords Barack Obama an opportunity to help make that pledge a reality. Unless Mr. Obama swiftly orders the Pentagon to change course on the remarkable Airborne Laser Test Bed (ALTB) program, however, his legacy on defense preparedness will be one of empty rhetoric and increased danger for our country.

The Airborne Laser program is a direct descendent of Ronald Reagan's visionary Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), with its exploration of various means of intercepting and destroying ballistic missiles - including lasers and other "directed energy" techniques. Given the state of the art at the time, critics scoffed at the idea that these exotic, speed-of-light weapons could ever be made to work. The late Sen. Edward Kennedy exemplified this view when he dismissively dubbed the SDI program "Star Wars."

Today, however, it is the critics who look ridiculously shortsighted. Thanks to two decades of intensive research and development and an investment of roughly $5 billion, America's aerospace industry has achieved an extraordinary feat of science and engineering. They have successfully married a Boeing 747 airframe with three chemical lasers: a low-power system used for tracking a missile early in its flight; a second, low-energy laser that measures and calculates adjustments needed to compensate for atmospheric conditions; and a third, megawatt-class high energy laser that uses the others' data to destroy the missile by using its heat to induce structural failure.

The ALTB successfully performed this feat not once but twice on February 11, taking out first a short-range liquid-fueled missile and then a solid-fueled one representative of the sorts of threats emerging notably from North Korea and Iran. Importantly, these intercepts took place during the boost-phase - a capability that means the missile and its deadly payload could be destroyed over the territory of a would-be attacker. That potentially devastating prospect may serve as a further disincentive to a hostile power's launching the missile in the first place.
At a time when the Obama administration is rushing anti-missile defenses systems to the Persian Gulf in the face of intensifying regional concerns about Iran's ballistic missiles, one could be forgiven for thinking that every effort would be made to bring to bear the Airborne Laser system's ability to perform boost-phase intercepts. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

Far from contemplating the early deployment of the ALTB, the Fiscal Year 2011 defense budget recently submitted to Congress by the Obama administration eliminates any further preparation of the platform as a weapon system. It will be confined, instead, to development and testing of laser technologies.

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