US AFSOC Committed to Testing, Deploying Lasers on AC-130J Gunships

Air Force Special Operations Command has accepted that it will trade some offensive capability for cost savings and fielding time on its future laser-equipped Lockheed Martin AC-130J Ghostrider if the laser is mounted on the side of the aircraft.

Although a laser turret mounted on the bottom of the gunship will provide more offensive and defensive capability in the long run, the belly-mounted turret would cost more and take much longer to develop, an Air Force spokesman told FlightGlobal this week. The side configuration would require fewer modifications to the existing aircraft, he added.

A recent Air Force Scientific Advisory Board study examined the laser’s placement in a turret on the aircraft’s belly versus mounting the laser on the side in place of the 30-millimeter gun. The AFSAB found the side-mount position would reduce the area the laser could prosecute since the aircraft itself would block its effective hemisphere. Half of that hemisphere points upward, a direction that’s largely useless against surface-to-air missiles, AFSAB chair Werner Dahm said in a June 24 email to FlightGlobal. The belly-mounted turret would have full range to target SAMs.

“To keep demo costs down they [AFSOC] are considering putting the turret in the existing side hole, where the gun currently sits,” Dahm said. “This will still allow us to learn a lot about how to employ a laser in AFSOC missions, but it is not nearly as useful as having the turret on the bottom in the demo.”

But AFSOC chief Lt. Gen. Bradley Heithold, who is pursuing an aggressive schedule for the laser gunship and plans to field a testbed by 2020, would make the capability tradeoff in order to field the aircraft faster.

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more info.

Special Forces Want Laser, Drone Armed AC-130 Gunship by 2020

Lt. Gen. Brad Heithold, the head of Air Force Special Operations Command, wants to make the AC-130 a kind of flying aircraft carrier, launching mini-drones mid-flight to scope out threats and targets. Oh, and he wants the AC-130 to have a laser cannon as well.

Speaking to the Association of Old Crows’ annual conference on electronic warfare, Heithold didn’t spend much time talking about EW. Yes, the AC-130’s current defensive jamming and spoofing suite — comparable to that on the aging B-52 — will be upgraded on the future AC-130J model, but even that won’t be enough to protect the gunship against increasingly sophisticated future threats.

“It’s been very successful at this point in defending itself on the target,” Heithold said. “That is not going to be case going forward.”

Instead, Heithold argued, AFSOC needs new ways to make its low-and-slow gunships more survivable: “The key, I believe, is to pursue high energy laser capabilities.”

Heithold sees both lasers and drones as having both offensive and defensive applications. It was the defensive side he focused on this morning. By shooting down enemy surface-to-air missiles, for example, a laser-armed AC-130 could defend not just itself but other coalition aircraft.

After a year of talking with “every industry partner who’s ever even touched a laser…I know the technology has matured now,” Heithold said. “I believe we can put a high energy laser — offensive and defensive — on an AC-130 by the close of this decade.”

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US Air Force Special Operations Wants Tube Launched, Expendable Drone for AC-130s Targeting

US Air Force Special Operations Command wants an expendable, tube-launched small unmanned aerial vehicle for its AC-130 “battleplane” for peering beneath cloud cover to direct gunfire and precision-guided munitions.

The special forces organisation, which employs a large fleet of manned gunships equipped with 30mm and 105mm cannons, is pursuing the so-called Tactical Off-board Sensor as a way of “taking the cover of weather away from the enemy”.

AFSOC commander Lt Gen Bradley Heithold says the tube-launched UAV could be dropped from the back of the Lockheed Martin C-130-based gunship and orbit below the clouds. The sensor gimbal is controlled remotely from the AC-130, allowing crews to feed imagery and target coordinates into the on-board fire control system.

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May I suggest a hardened Locust drone.   That's to go with the laser they want.  If they are putting lasers and drones on the 130, I wonder what the LRS-B is going to have.

Air Force Special Operations Command Wants a Laser for the AC-130

Air Force Special Operations Command’s top officer said he wanted to explore the possibility of adding a laser or directed energy weapon to the AC-130J Ghostrider.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Bradley Heithold, head of AFSOC, told a crowd at NDIA’s SO/LIC conference in Washington D.C. on Tuesday that he thought the technology was mature enough to install a laser weapon onto the AC-130J gunship.

The Air Force has already decided it will mount a 105mm cannon onto the newest variant of the gunship after the Air Force chose to limit the W-model to smart bombs and the 30mm cannon. Heithold explained that the 105mm cannon was needed because it was more accurate and cheaper than firing the Small Diameter Bombs.

The Pentagon has continued to expand its research into direct energy weapons, especially the Navy. Top Navy officials have remain committed to incorporating lasers onto Navy warships.

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