Letter to the editor

New Scientist Issue#2686, p26

Airborne Laser.......

I found humorous and disturbing the fact that a German Institute would finance a study about the ABL, when many of my colleagues and myself, already in the late 80's, considered this system to be a “no-goer”. That now new applications are being touted, only shows that an attempt is being made to keep this boondoggle alive for the sake of military careers and contractor revenues. That academia consistently falls for this American “hype” never ceases to amaze me. Especially when one considers that the “airborne laser time line” sidebar in the article is very misleading; both the 1981 and 1985 “tests” were rigged, common knowledge among the analysts.

Studies of this sort usually assume that every thing works as advertised and in a perfect world, yet our world, let alone a battlefield is anything but perfect. If one reads Sun Tzu, Clausewitz and Murphy's Laws, one needs to say no more. There were too many questions unanswered then and still are today.

1. Will the laser function reliably under strain, i. e. combat conditions – under air defense fire? The plane would be a siting duck for countermeasures. Will the platform be quiet enough, not shake and rattle, under possible air turbulence? Or explosions caused by enemy defense missiles? Will the beam arrive, and in what condition; will the adaptive optics suite be able to content will 15 kilometers of ever denser atmosphere to reach the target?

2. Operational! Drones and UAVs (Unmanned aerial vehicles) are a safer option, cheaper and expendable compared to the ABL. Will the laser even be effective “in the fog of war”, e. g. smoke, dust and other environmental factors?

But in light of the post 9/11 world there may be an application for the ABL that might actually make sense. Against a half developed opponent with a functioning air defense, the system would be too vulnerable. But against an opponent of limited means, a system with “measured lethality” (ML), could be the right prescription to use (without abusing the usual mantra about surgical strikes). Two board application categories come to mind, terrorists and nuclear proliferators:

Terrorize the terrorists: the foot soldiers of most terrorist organizations are often uneducated and very superstitious, the ABL could be a type of “the hand of god” weapon. Consider:

• Sudanese horse militiamen suddenly see some of their riders cum horse suddenly go up in flames in Darfur without anyone but helpless villagers around.

• A Somali pirate boat catches fire and explodes without anyone else even on the horizon

• An terrorist training camp in the tribal areas has it ammunition dump blowup without warning. The entrance to a cave, an operations base, is buried through a sudden landslide.

With these means, we could terrorize the terrorists. They could never be sure when “that something” - whatever it was - strikes. They would have be more covert, cautious and constantly looking over their shoulder. In Cold War terms, a type of deterrence would occur.

A further aspect would be against nuclear proliferators. All logistic chains have some sort of choke point/bottle neck. Find where and what this is, in e. g. Iran, and destroy or at least disrupt it. By going in with the proper ECM (Electronic Countermeasures), even the Boeing can be made to appear on the defense radar screen as a drone or a Cessna. Nobody could prove who it was, or if it even was only a coincidental accident! In the worst of cases, this would buy time for a diplomatic solution and at the same instant demonstrate that we mean business. Every weapon is only effective in terms of cost and results for the right mission, find it.