Battlespace Tech
Directed energy weapons making a great leap forward
Paul Shattuck is director and chief engineer for Directed Energy Systems at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. He’s been with Lockheed since 1974, with a focus area of the development of beam control technologies for High Power Laser Directed Energy Systems. He spent most of the 1980s developing and testing beam control technologies for the Strategic Defense Initiative, culminating in a simulated ground demonstration of a pace-based laser engagement of enemy ballistic missiles for President Reagan in November 1987. For 15 years he held various leadership roles on the Airborne Laser (ABL) program, including program director during the design and development phase, and Remote Site Test Director leading the team responsible for integration of the beam control/fire control system on the Airborne Laser and for all ground and flight tests
He recently spoke with Defense Systems contributor David Walsh about ramped-up interest in directed energy (d-e) technology and laser (“beam”) weapons, including Lockheed’s ATHENA test, in which a laser burned through a truck engine a mile distant.
Defense Systems: Since Hughes Corp.’s research division demonstrated the first laser in 1960, have the various types and sizes and wattages on offer from industry, DARPA and its kin changed fundamentally?
Paul Shattuck: The most significant change has been the transition from chemical lasers to fiber lasers in the last decade, which has real implications on size [and] on wattage. The fiber laser weapons we’re developing at Lockheed Martin [for example], require less platform “prime” power and cooling to place the most energy-on-target to defeat threats at a longer range. The approach scales with advancements in higher power and lower weight solutions.
The lasers also have a better efficiency rate, allowing greater use of power to generate a high-quality beam that requires less time to dwell and successfully eliminate the target.
DS: There’s been a dizzying sort of wafting and waning of interest in weaponized directed energy – what’s called directed energy weapons (DEW). To what period and what circumstances do you trace this slow evolution-to-warp speed revolution process? Certainly there seems a big ramp-up in DEW interest and activity.
Shattuck: We are at the convergence of laser weapon technology maturity - and tactical mission needs - in the new threat environment like swarms of drones or small boats, for example. On the technology side, [government and industry are] leveraging advancements in fiber optic communications and the power scale from industrial drilling and cutting applications to developing beam-combination techniques. That lets us create a single, high-power laser beam.
Lockheed's Paul Shattuck
We’re also taking advantage of data and image processing speeds from the video game industry to make the beam control system more accurate and precise.
Meanwhile, rockets, mortars and small-unmanned aerial systems are presenting an increased threat around the world... Customers are looking for precise, affordable, rapid-response firepower to defend against these threats. Laser weapon systems can fill that gap.
DS: Reports indicate your firm is fast moving or leading in development of 100-kilowatt and 300-kilowatt laser guns for the Army and possibly Air Force, and that they should be available/deployable by 2022. Please give a snapshot of the technology and a few of the likely uses by the armed forces and Homeland Security.
Shattuck: Lockheed Martin has been investing internal research and development funding to mature the technologies and integrated system operation. We started by developing a ground-based 10-kilowatt prototype using a commercial laser, a program we call Area Defense Anti-Munitions, or ADAM. In 2012 and 2013, ADAM shot down 19 small-caliber Quassam-like rockets and an unmanned aerial system in flight. We also disabled two Zodiak-type boats.
In 2014, we scaled up power by integrating our Lockheed Martin 30-kilowatt ALADIN laser with the ADAM architecture and beam control to create our Advanced Test High Energy Asset, or ATHENA, prototype. In our early testing, ATHENA stopped the engine of a truck, and last year we defeated four quad copter drone targets.
Last year, we began production of at 60-kilowatt system for a U.S. Army vehicle – the first laser built using a modular technique. The Army has the option to add more modules and increase power from 60 kilowatts to 120 kilowatts as a result of the laser’s modularity.
As we’ve demonstrated in our testing so far, these ground-based systems can defend against close-in rockets, mortars and unmanned aerial vehicles.
DS: And beyond the terrestrial?
PS: We have also demonstrated air applications for laser weapon systems with our DOD customers. We developed the beam control system for the Missile Defense Agency’s airborne laser that shot down a boosting ballistic missile in 2010. That system used a megawatt-class chemical laser, but it was a strategic mission in which the target was in front of the aircraft.
Today, we are looking at tactical missions that require that a laser weapon system be able to fire in virtually any direction, which means we had to overcome the aircraft’s atmospheric wake that would scatter the laser beam. In about 60 flight tests of Aero-adaptive Aero-optic Beam Control, or ABC, turret design for [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] and the [Air Force Research Lab], we demonstrated that we can counteract turbulence, which is an important step for integrating lasers onto aircraft.
Air-based laser weapon systems can offer flexibility and precision for self-defense against aircraft, missiles and weapons on the ground. They also have offensive potential, including precision ground attack against defended targets or swarms of attack boats.
DS: SECNAV Mabus at the Directed Energy Summit last year signaled the need for much closer stakeholder ties, melding government agencies, the national labs, think tanks, DOD, industry, academia, so the U.S. can “stay ahead of the threat.”
PS: Those [connections] are critical. That’s how we’re going to get directed energy technology into the hands of our warfighters. A great example of that was our ABC turret program, which was a partnership of AFRL, DARPA, Lockheed Martin, the University of Notre Dame, Georgia Tech Research Institute and several small businesses.
DS: From industry's, and by indirection your DOD partners' viewpoint, are we playing catch-up to the bad guys in D-E offense in similar fashion to cyber offense - where some assert we've lagged due to our longtime focus on the cyber defense piece?
PS: Directed energy offers the ability to cost-effectively counter asymmetric threats, both offensively and defensively.
DS: Are we adequately positioning ourselves technologically to get the jump on the enemy, or, at least, to fight fire with fire? The Naval Research Lab, Naval Postgraduate School and others are developing counter- d-e programs. Are you likewise engaged?
PS: Yes, we are looking at countermeasures to directed energy to ensure systems’ effectiveness.
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