Air Force Chief Reiterates DOD Position On Current ABL: Not In The Plan

March 31, 2010 at 7:54 am | Posted in Space Law Current Events | Leave a comment

by Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz with the blog faculty

Source: InsideDefense.com

The Air Force’s top uniformed officer today reiterated the Obama administration’s view that the Airborne Laser would never be used in any operational capacity.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter are all on record saying the ABL is too expensive and lacks a working operational concept. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz today echoed those remarks, saying the ABL’s “chemical laser is probably not the long-term play in this area.” ABL was originally an Air Force program when it deputed in 1996; while it was subsequently transferred to the Missile Defense Agency, the Air Force was always seen as the eventual buyer for the platform. Schwartz’s comments today puts an end to any thoughts of the service ever buying ABL.

The ABL, developed by a Boeing-led industry team, carries a $1 billion to $1.5 billion per aircraft price tag.

However, because the Air Force was the service that began the program in the 1990s before ABL was transferred to the Missile Defense Agency, Schwartz’s words may be the final word on using the system operationally.

“That’s not to say that a laser has an absolute place in our future — I’m certain that that’s the case,” Schwartz told attendees of an Air Force Association-sponsored breakfast. “It is probably something more on the lines of the solid-state or electric kinds of systems rather than chemical sorts of lasers, but still developmental and absolutely worth our continuing efforts in that regard and it will be, I’m convinced, a significant factor in our capability in the years ahead.”

Schwartz’s comments come in the wake of the program’s seminal triumph — last month’s first-ever successful intercept of a boosting target missile off the California coast.

The first shoot-down of a sounding rocket — which went unannounced — took place on Feb. 3, according to a Missile Defense Agency statement released Feb. 12. A second intercept of a ballistic missile was accomplished Feb. 11.

The ABL program has suffered from cost overruns and delays since its inception, so much so that MDA for this fiscal year proposed zeroing out funding for the ABL budget line and creating a new program element called the Airborne Laser Test Bed “to fund continued research on lasers,” according to the agency’s FY-11 budget overview.

“[T]he truth is, we would need such a number of ABL platforms that actually affect the mission — that it simply is neither affordable nor in my mind operationally feasible,” Schwartz said this morning. “So we . . . instead will continue to use the ABL for test purposes but focusing on other means of generating this laser capability.”

One effort the Air Force would be willing to take charge of is the command, control, battle management and communications (C2BMC) portion of the Ballistic Missile Defense System, according to Schwartz.

“One of the things that we believe strongly is that [with] our air operations centers and our broader capability as area air defense commanders and so on, we need to integrate the missile-defense capabilities that we field and as they are fielded in this broader context,” he said. “And so, we have made the case that if we’re going to transition the MDA [C2BMC effort] to a program of record, that we would be willing as a service to host that. Other services are interested as well, and so ultimately this will probably be resolved in the Tank. But we think that this needs to be a part of the repertoire of the Joint Force Air Component Commander with their Area Air Defense Command responsibility.”
— John Liang