Airborne Laser (ABL): Issues for Congress

Publication Date: July 2007

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

Author(s):

Research Area: Military and defense

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Abstract:

The United States has pursued a variety of ballistic missile defense concepts and programs over the past fifty years. Since the 1970s, some attention has focused on directed energy weapons, such as high-powered lasers for missile defense. Today, the Airborne Laser (ABL) program is the furthest advanced of these directed energy weapons and remains the subject of some technical and program debate.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has been a strong advocate for the ABL and its predecessor programs. The Defense Department and most missile defense advocates argue that the ABL, which is designed to shoot down attacking ballistic missiles within the first few minutes of their launch, is a necessary component of any broader U.S. ballistic missile defense system. Congress has largely supported the Administration's ABL program.

Funding for the ABL began in FY1994, but the technologies supporting the ABL effort evolved over 25 years of research and development concerning laser power concepts, pointing and tracking, and adaptive optics. Delayed now for many years, the ABL program plans to conduct a lethality test no earlier than 2008. Assuming a successful test, the Defense Department has said that this test platform could then be made available on an emergency basis in a future crisis. To date, about $3.1 billion has been spent on the ABL program. Total program costs are not available because the system architecture has not been defined.

Program skeptics continue to raise several issues. Their questions include the maturity of the technologies in use in the ABL program and whether current technical and integration challenges can be surmounted. If the ABL is proven successful, there have been questions about the number of platforms the United States should acquire. Seven aircraft have been mentioned previously, but is this number appropriate? What stresses might continued ABL program slippage or delays place on the supporting industrial base? How does the ABL compare to alternative concepts? To what degree should the United States invest in alternative missile defense technologies in the event that the ABL program may not prove successful?

This report examines the ABL program and budget status. It also examines some of the issues raised above. This report does not provide a detailed technical assessment of the ABL program (see CRS Report RL30185, The Airborne Laser Anti-Missile Program). This report may be updated as necessary.