CLIP FROM 'ARMY TIMES' SEP 87. 'WORK CONTINUES ON LASER SITE IN DESERT'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96-00789R002000140003-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 14, 1998
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: September 1, 1987
• Content Type: NSPR

ion
WHITE SANDS MISSILE
RANGE, N.M. -The nation's first
round-based, free-electron la-
?er, perhaps the precursor to weap-
ns that could strike enemy mis-
iles as they rise from their launch
ads, is under construction.
The $1.7 billion Strategic De
ense Initiative project, managed by
he Army's Strategic Defense
ommand. could develop the tech-
nology for a key element in a com-
plex of strategic defense systems
which could defend either the
United States or its allies.
About 20 miles east of White
Sands' main post, a wide drive an-
tes away from the main road
deep into the desert scrub brush.
Culverts for drainage, a drilling
derrick for water wells, power lines
and building excavations line the
way to an expanding rectangle of
cleared land that marks the site
for an ambitious experiment in ]a-
sertechnology.
According to treaties with the
Soviets, WhiteLSands and the Pacif-
ic atoll of Kwaialien are the two
U.S. testing ranges designated for
strategic defense experiments.
After a series of environmental
studies, the 20 square-mile Oro
Grande location was selected.
"We have to bring in water,
power [about five times what all of
White Sands presently uses] and
roads - build a whole research
complex," said Col. James F.
McNulty, head of the GBFELtech-
nology integration experiment
McNulty is a tall, silver-haired
field artilleryman who served two
tours of duty in Vietnam, but who
a iso found time between field as-
signments to study at a half-dozen
prestigious institutions, including
%1 assachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology and Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, where he
gathered advanced degrees in nu-
1ear physics and management
before receiving his present assign-
,nent in January 1986.
0 8/ CI RI!
RSHmaoill
sri
White Sands Missile Range Illustration
An artist's conception of the Ground Based Free Electron the foreground. An underground tunnel takes the laser
Laser experiment now under construction at White Sands beam to the opposite end of the facility (3 to 5 kilometers
Missile Range shows the facilities for forming the beam in away) for transmission into space.
His first months on the job government intepretation of the ABM treaty, generation of a stream of electrons,
were spent attending the Defense It is part of a futuristic trend work on the free-electron laser the charged particles that vibrate
Systems Management College at that will place the American soldier can go ahead, because it is a fixed, around the nucleus of an atom. The
Fort Belvoir, Va., during the week farther from his enemies, but will ground-based element and there- electrons are injected into a
and traveling around the country at the same time extend the strate- fore "treaty compliant." Application charged medium, stripped from
trying to organize the project on gic battlefield, McNulty said. of the treaty to the mirrors being their atoms (thus the name free- .
weekends. His staff has grown Aground-based laser, if used in developed by other Army and Air electron) and then accelerated to
from zero to 42 in the first year and a a weapon system, would work in Force teams is understudy. near the speed of light
half, although, he said, laser and conjunction with a relay mirror Interestingly enough, even The induction laser uses the
optical experts are a rarity, in stationary (geosychronous) orbit McNulty doesn't know what the fl- magnetic fields produced by large
"It is exciting," he said. "I start- over the laser site, and fighting nal design of the laser will look magnets to speed up the elec-
ed with absolutely nothing but a mirrors orbiting over areas such as like. It could be either a long, trons; the RF laser employs radio
piece of paper. [Lt] Gen. [John] the Soviet Union that might be straight structure (the induction waves pumped into resonant cav-
Wall [commander of the Washing- expected to launch missiles. The la- laser proposed by TRW and Law- ities to do the same thing.
ton-based SDC] said to me, `Don't ser beam, generated on the rence Livermore National Lab- The speeding electrons are
come back until it works."' ground and reflected over tens of oratory) or a more compact, race- then passed through a device with
While the project is seen as an thousands of kilometers by mir- track design (the radio frequency varying magnetic fields which are
experiment and not a weapon sys- rors, would focus on and destroy tar- [RF] laser proposed by BoeingAero- used to make the electrons oscillate
tem, it is aimed at a well-def ined gets such as the ballistic missile space Co. and Los Alamos Na- or move back and forth, hence the
military end. The Army has defense and the "buses" that can carry 10 to tional Laboratory). The final choice box is known as a "wiggler."
applications for the technology if 15 warheads plus dozens of is to be made by the end of fiscal Each time the electron wiggles,
it is approved for further develop- decoys. 1988.
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See LASER, Page 40
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 said Max Newsom, manager of the
gg advanced projects department. It
Approved For.Releese 2000/08/08: CIA-ROP9-0001819 0 0 ~1
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CPYRGHT
An 8-inch howitzer used by scientists at
Sandia National Laboratories shoots a new
shell design through monitored targets.
Laser
From Page 35
photons, tiny particles of light, are
produced. Through subsequent
stimulation of the electrons by the
photons, up to 40 percent of the
electron beam's energy is extracted
to produce the high power laser
beam.
In the induction device, a small
"seed" laser, operating at a pre-de-
termined frequency, is fired into
a 100-foot-long wiggler. The seed la-
ser is amplified as energy is ex-
tracted from the electron beam and
converted to light energy at the
same frequency as the seed laser.
The electron beam, as it exits the
wiggler, is quickly separated and
discarded so that only the laser
beam goes onto the optical system.
The laser beam is focused to
about the diameter of a pencil, is
then allowed to expand (to about
one meter) naturally in a vacuum as
it moves through a 3- to 5-kilome-
ter-long beam tunnel. It must ex-
pand, otherwise, the focused
beam is powerful enough to blow
apart the mirror designed to di-
rect it into space.
The RF concept does not use a
seed laser. The light produced by
the electron beam is reflected
back and forth in the wigglerbe-
N tween sets of mirrors (called a
W ring resonator and the size of a foot-
ball geld), each time generating
more photons and finally being al-
lowed to escape through a hole in
the mirror to the optical system.
In December, a request for pro-
t 1, will be sent out to industry
from the ground-based laser pro-
yj ject office. In February, industrial
competitors will submit their
sr plans and designs. And in June,
McNulty and his team will pick
40 the winner.
Researchers there are using technology
developed in the nuclear weapons program
to create improved conventional weapons.
"Each team has technical mile-
stones to meet before the decision is
made," McNulty said.
He noted that even then the
team still won't know for sure if the
design works.
"But we will at least know what
the unknowns are," McNulty said.
One of those unknowns is how
to keep the electron and light beams
stable and straight in the long
wiggler of the induction laser.
"In the optical guidance
scheme, the electrons ride in a
trough, or tunnel, of light,"
McNulty said. The packets of elec-
trons and li it must be exactly in
synchronization. If we can't keep
them in the trough, we will never
have the efficiency we need. We
should have evidence by the end
of December if it can work."
The RF laser also has its prob-
lems. Using mirrors to multiply the
a wide range of options that, for ex-
ample, could reduce the mili-
tary's logistics tail and at the same
time improve the weapon's
effectiveness.
light forces researchers to the
ragged edge of technology. The
needed lenses (mirrors) have to
be of two types: paraboloid and
hyper-paraboloid. The paraba-
loid has an off-center focus. The hy-
perparaboloid is specially de-
signed for reflections at glancing
grazing angles.
"Where we can't put light di-
rectly onto a mirror, we skip it off,"
McNulty said.
Turrets will house the control system that of mirrors based in space. Ultimately it will
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manufactured laser beam toward a system destroy them.
low iLU.
"Advanced conventional muni-
tions are of increasing national im-
portance and we have only
scratched the surface of their poten-
tial capability," Newsom said.
Sandia is not operating on an
unlimited budget, however, and the
See SANDIA, Page 42
Both types of mirrors are nec-
essary for the RF laser to work. Both
have been designed and are in
the final stages of fabrication, but
remain to be tested. The testing is
scheduled for December and
January.
After the laser beam is generat-
ed it has to be controlled in a vacu-
um and then shaped and correct-
ed for atmospheric effects before it
is reflected into space from a
ground mirror. Reseachers have the
formidable task of building a
four-meter-wide mirror to direct
the beam. There also is a "signifi-
cant engineering challenge" to use a
single aperture to receive the
beacon beam coming down and
transmit the weapon beam going
up, McNulty said.
There are some more knotty
problems with using lasers in the at-
mosphere over long distances.
"Laser beams don't like air,"
McNulty said.
Turbulence, water, dust or
eddy currents in the atmosphere
can affect a laser beam just as fog
can disperse a light beam.
Also, a laser beam heats the air
through which it travels. That
causes the air density to change,
which bends the laser beam and
produces "thermal blooming,"
which once again dissipates its
power.
Finally, nitrogen in the air ab-
sorbs the photons, or particles of
light, that make up a laser beam.
Nitrogen alters the wave lengths of
the light and spits it out in other
directions.
"Those are the three things we
have to overcome," he said.