Abstract
The U.S. Air Force Airborne Laser consists of four primary subsystem segments; aircraft, battle management and C4I, laser device, and beam control segment (BCS). The BCS performs two major function, beam control and fire control, using three primary products, turret assembly, beam transfer assembly, and fire control hardware and software. The fire control sequence involves slewing the turret to the target coordinates as received from the battle management segment, centering the target in the acquisition sensor, acquiring the plume in the coarse track sensor, acquiring the hard body of the missile with the track illuminator laser, and establishing active tracking of the nose of the target theater ballistic missile. The beam control sequence begins after established active nose track by firing another beacon illuminator laser (BILL) to establish the aim point on the missile for the high energy laser. The resulting spot on the missile is imaged in the wavefront sensor and compared with the outgoing sample of the BILL. By applying the conjugate of the wavefront difference from the beacon to a deformable mirror then the atmosphere serves to correct the arriving wavefront on target. At this point the HEL is fired along the same path with similar wavefront correction, and dwells on target until the missile skin is weakened and rips open or buckles.
