By Michael Sirak
Directed-energy weapons like lasers and high-powered microwaves (HPMs) still hold great promise in the eyes of Pentagon weapons designers for dramatically impacting the battlespace and how an adversary operates, but many issues remain along the path to fielding them and integrating them into mainstream military operations, a senior Pentagon official said earlier this week.
“When it comes to fielding these devices, people want to see some proof,” Jay Kistler, technical director for Air Warfare within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, said Dec. 11 during a presentation in Washington, D.C.
He spoke on the first day of the two-day Directed Energy & Non-Lethal Weapons 2007 conference in Washington, D.C., an event that the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement (IDGA) sponsored.
Indeed, Kistler said, there are still questions among warfighters “whether or not what they are hearing is real” in terms of the capabilities of these systems. This results in their hesitancy to commit to them at this time and a lack of “universality of interest” among combatant commanders in them, he said.
“People are not terribly willing to take high risk on uncertainty,” he said. Accordingly, “I don’t know if I see any of those on the path, if you will, to full fielding, to large-scale integration in the battlespace.”
Further, Kistler said, the United States must be aware that its own military systems will be vulnerable to these same types of directed-energy weapons when applied by a skillful adversary. For example, the optical sensors upon which the U.S. military relies to maintain a persistent stare over the battlefield could be susceptible to disruption by them, he said.
Kistler said the Department of Defense (DoD) is pursuing principally two classes of directed-energy systems today: HPMs with limited ranges for control of personnel and crowds, or to disrupt the electronics on enemy weapons, such as man-portable anti-aircraft missiles; and more powerful high-end lasers, such as the Airborne Laser (ABL), designed to reach out and engage objects at much greater distances.
The HPMs provide “some niche capabilities,” he said. “But I do not and have not seen a clear solution for the combatant commanders to be ready to take and pick up and incorporate in their day-to-day in this context.”
Further, today’s high-end lasers have features that limit their utility and effectiveness, he said, such as the need to use chemicals in the case of the ABL to generate the system’s powerful megawatt laser beam for destroying ballistic missiles in flight.
Nonetheless, directed-energy system remain intriguing because of there ability to operate at lightning fast speeds and the DoD continues to mature them with the intend of getting them out to the warfighter, Kistler said. Indeed, one of their biggest selling points is that they would buy the warfighter more time to interdict and understand the intent of a potentially hostile person, aircraft, land vehicle or ship before having to commit lethal force, he said.
“If you have a directed-energy system that operates at the speed of light, it buys you more time…to make that decision and understand what is out there,” he said.
This option becomes more and more important as U.S. forces find themselves in scenarios in which they must operate in areas that are not fully controlled by friendly forces and where there are gaps in situational awareness, he said.
Kistler also said the Pentagon’s acquisition community needs a better understanding of the tradable design space when procuring these devices and where the technology trends are leading and where to invest most wisely.
One directed-energy system that the DoD has matured and thoroughly tested to the point of transitioning to an operational capability is the Raytheon [RTN]-built Active Denial System (ADS), a millimeter-wave device that heats the top layers of a person’s skin when exposed to the system’s energy beam. The device has a range greater than the reach of small arms fire, the Pentagon says. It is meant for missions like protecting facilities by controlling unruly crowds and keeping them away.
Led by the Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, the DoD has matured and validated ADS technology over the course of a five-year Office of the Secretary of Defense- sponsored advanced concept technology demonstration (ACTD) that concluded on Sept. 30. During this project, Raytheon built both an ADS System 1, a mobile configuration mounted on High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle, and an ADS System 2, a ruggedized, more militarized variant that is transportable via a tactical vehicle.
With the ACTD done, the focus, beginning in FY ’08, is to execute a two-year “bridge program” that will identify the desired ADS operational configuration and transition the work to a formal program of record around the FY ’10 timeframe, David Law, science and technology chief within the Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program, said Dec. 11 at the IDGA conference. The Air Force’s Air Armament Center at Eglin AFB, Fla., is leading this transition, with the cooperation of the Army.
During this fiscal year, the goal is to develop a combat capability document for the ADS and analyze the ADS System 2’s efficiencies and magazine capability, Law said. System 2 is available for operational deployment if called upon, he noted.
As part of the ongoing activities, the DoD is pursuing technologies to make the ADS smaller and lighter and more affordable, based on feedback from the warfighter, so that it could be used with smaller sized tactical vehicles, he said.