MissileThreat.com

Country:	USA
Basing:	Space

Details

The Space-Based Laser (SBL) is one of the United States’s most daring and sophisticated anti-missile projects. As envisioned, it would consist of a 20-satellite constellation orbiting the globe at altitudes of 1,300 kilometers, each satellite equipped with a high-energy chemical laser that would detect, track, target, and destroy hostile ballistic missiles at the speed of light.

 

SBLs would be capable of destroying enemy missiles of all sizes just after they have been launched, i.e. during the vulnerable boost phase when missiles are large and slow moving. By eliminating large numbers of incoming warheads quickly and efficiently, SBL would significantly reduce the burden on midcourse and terminal phase defenses. If completed, the SBL constellation would be the most important “layer” of the broader Ballistic Missile Defense System.

 

The project began in the early 1980s under the auspices of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and was transferred to the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization in 1984. In 1999, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the U.S. Air Force created a joint venture—the Space-Based Laser Integrated Flight Experiment (SBL-IFX)—that included Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and TRW. SBL-IFX initially planned to perform a complete demonstration of SBL’s capabilities by 2012, although MDA recently canceled this test date.

 

Progress on SBL has been challenged by the sheer complexity of the laser mechanism and tracking system, as well as the obstacle of creating a beam strong enough to travel through space and destroy an enemy missile. As currently envisioned, however, each SBL would consist of five main components: a satellite, a tracker, a laser beam, a beam control system, and a beam director.

 

Each SBL would be located on a satellite roughly 20 meters long and weighing about 17,500 kilograms. The acquisition and tracking system, the “eyes” of each SBL, would detect the bright plume of a liquid-fueled missile as it rises above the clouds. The tracker would then lock on to the missile, compute its position and velocity, and predict how far it would have to travel in the amount of time the laser beam takes to cover the distance.

 

Once locked on to the enemy missile, the SBL would then fire its megawatt-class high power beam. Within a three-meter long cylinder, hydrogen and fluorine gas would react and produce HF molecules in an excited state. An optical resonator would extract energy from the HF molecules and produce the actual beam. The beam control system would then aim the laser at the enemy missile, correct any aberrations in the beam itself, and transfer it to the beam director—a large mirror designed to focus the laser on the enemy missile.

 

Once released, the high-powered beam would rush into the vacuum of space at the speed of light, penetrate the earth’s atmosphere, and destroy the missile just above the clouds. The entire process, from detection to elimination, would take seconds. Each SBL would carry enough fuel for about one hundred shots.

 

Technical challenges aside, a fully operational 20-satellite constellation of SBLs would provide the United States with an effective means of eliminating large quantities of enemy missiles. In addition to providing continuous global coverage, SBL would take between one and ten seconds to destroy each missile and as low as 0.5 seconds to lock on to its next target (depending on the range). In other words, SBL would be able to respond instantaneously and comprehensively to missiles launched from anywhere on the globe. It is estimated that a 20-satellite constellation would destroy almost all threats, while a 12-satellite constellation would eliminate 94 percent.

 

An added benefit of SBL is that it would force aggressors to think twice before launching nuclear, chemical, and biological warheads, since the destruction of a ballistic missile in its boost phase would cause payload debris to rain down on its launcher’s own territory.

 

Despite its manifest advantages, the future of SBL remains uncertain. In 2002, MDA suspended research and development in order to concentrate on other components of the Ballistic Missile Defense System. At present, no decision has been made to deploy an operational SBL as part of a nationwide missile shield. Yet the fact remains that SBL’s potential to instantaneously destroy almost all missiles launched against the United States would force terrorists and aggressive nations to abandon their ballistic missile programs—since SBL would render them essentially useless.

 

 

Sources

 

Arms Control Association.
The Boeing Company.
Federation of American Scientists.
GlobalSecurity.org.
Missile Defense Agency.
“Space-Based Laser Team Defines Requirements for Experimental Missile Defense System.” Space Daily, 4 April 2001.