US Missile Defense Agency Wants Megawatt Class Laser by 2025/2026

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is looking for information on a 1,000 kW-class electrically-pumped laser for defending the United States, its deployed forces, allies, and friends against all ranges of enemy ballistic missiles in all phases of flight.

The post on the federal business opportunities website is asking industry for information on a capability to demonstrate a 1,000 kW-class electrically-pumped laser in the 2025-26 timeframe.

Missile Defense Agency does not provide a specific platform or strategic mission at this time. The proposed ground demonstrator laser system would be designed to have technology maturation and lightweight engineering paths to potential future platforms.

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US Missile Defense Agency Wants a Laser Weapon for Missile Defense by 2021

The US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) hopes in 2021 to have developed and demonstrated an aerial laser with which it could intercept and destroy ballistic missiles.

Specifically, the agency wants "a low-power laser, in the 100-kW range, to prove the coherency and physics part" of destroying a ballistic missile from an unmanned airborne platform, MDA director Vice Admiral James Syring told the Senate on 13 April.

He said MDA wants to field a prototype to help gage if there is a feasible material solution, and explained that the effort would not be on the same large scale as the manned Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser Testbed (also known as the Airborne Laser: ABL), a multibillion development effort that was ultimately cancelled in 2009 after Secretary of Defense Robert Gates found the technology and operating concept unworkable.

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Missile Defense Agency Tests 2 Different SM-3 Variants in Three Days

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency on Dec. 8 conducted the second developmental flight test of its Standard Missile (SM)-3 Block 2A interceptor and awarded Raytheon a contract to build 17 more.

Two days later, the MDA carried out the first intercept test involving a land-based variant of the SM-3 Block 1B, a smaller interceptor deployed primarily on ships at sea. The land-based SM-3 Block 1B variant is being developed as part of the MDA multiphased plan for defending Europe against missile threats.

In the Dec. 10 test, the Block 1B interceptor, cued by a remote AN/TPY-2 radar, lifted off from the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense Complex on Kauai, Hawaii, and destroyed a ballistic missile target that had been launched from a U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft. The test’s success keeps the MDA on track to begin deploying SM 3 Block 1B interceptors in Romania next year, Raytheon said.

“This test proved that no matter how you launch it, an SM-3 can hunt down threats in space and destroy them,” Taylor Lawrence, president of Raytheon Missile Systems of Tucson, Arizona, said in a Dec. 10 release. “The flexibility to deploy SM-3s from land or sea expands protection options for our combatant commanders and allies around the world.”

Meanwhile, on Dec. 8, the MDA conducted a flight test of the SM-3 Block 2A, being developed jointly with Japan, from the Point Mugu Sea Range on San Nicolas Island in California. The test did not include the launch of a target.

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Lockheed, MDA, Thales Alenia Unveil Jupiter Deep Space Tug, Cargo Ship

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