In this session we addressed the High Energy Laser (HEL) program. Directed energy weapons systems may well be the next revolution in military technology. It provides an excellent case study of the promise these weapons systems hold as welll as the challenges the R&D community faces in fielding a reliable system.

Professor Hans Mark, Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas was our lead off speaker. Dr. Mark has held senior positions in both the Air Force and the Office of the Secretary fo Defense from which he played a key role in brining the HEL development to where it is today. Dr. Mark focused his remarks on how and why the airborne laser came to be developed.

Dr. Eli Zimet of the Center provided the perspective of a program manager who has managed complex scientific programs, including the development of the HEL demonstrators. Dr. Zimet turned his attention to discussing why, if lasers had potential as weapons, it took so long to develop them in those forms.

Dr. Mark noted that Lawrence Livermore Laboratory first began working on lasers while he chaired the Laboratory's Physics Department. Later, when he became a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the United States Air Force (USAF), he carried his understanding of laser technology with him and encouraged the Air Force to begin development of an airborne laser that could cripple ballistic missiles as they rose from their launch pads. Convincing his colleagues on the Scientific Advisory Board and then his associates in the Air Force that such a system needed to be developed took time. It took even longer to develop a suitable laser and the adaptive optics required to turn it into a weapon that could damage ballistic missiles.

One of the questions that has concerned researchers studying innovation in modern bureaucratic organizations is, "Just how important is leadership to successful innovation, and how is that leadership best applied?" The consensus is that executives attempting to make major changes in these organizations must stay in place long enough to overcome all the obstacles to change that routinely exist. But how should those executives act? And what role does technical expertise play in their success?

His talk also covered a different aspect of High Energy Laser (HEL) development relating to the need to develop and maintain a nuclear weapons stockpile in the United States with no weapons testing. When, in the mid-1970s, work with lasers showed that they could be employed to initiate nuclear reactions, the desire of the nuclear weapons custodians to maintain their weapons stockpile converged with the efforts of the developers of solid state lasers. If, as seems likely, the United States will not be able to conduct nuclear tests in the future, then it will have to invest in high-energy laser development simply to have a means to gauge the quality of the remaining nuclear weapons and to investigate the fundamentals of nuclear reactions for new weapons.

Dr. Zimet showed that the technical obstacles to make lasers effective weapons against ballistic missiles took years to overcome. That is, the delay in moving the laser from the laboratory to the skies was not primarily the result of bureaucratic, economic, or political factors but instead was something to be expected as a new technology was explored and refined. For example, the adaptive optics used in the airborne laser were revolutionary, and they had to be developed in parallel with work on increasing laser energy output and making sure that any laser fired at a ballistic missile actually found its target and stayed with it long enough to bring it down. In addition, he pointed out that at sea and ground level, propagation issues can severely impact the utility of high power laser systems.

The discussion after the two speakers had finished their presentations was spirited. Some members of the audience asked technical questions about how the airborne laser might be used: others asked how lasers fit into larger policies regarding missile defense and the proliferation of laser weapons, and still others wondered whether high-energy lasers could ever be cost-effective weapons.

Hans Mark returned to the problem of designing and constructing new types of nuclear weapons when the testing of such weapons was prohibited. His point was that the United States was at a kind of crossroads. On the one hand, the existing stockpile was degrading and would need to be replaced. On the other, it was time to rethink completely why the nation needed nuclear weapons at all. New nuclear weapons would most likely have small yields and be suited to different missions. They would therefore be of a new design or designs. Only by using high-energy lasers in special tests could the nation be sure of having a safe and reliable nuclear stockpile and new weapons suited to special missions.

Dr. Mark's point was that the nation would have to have high-energy lasers anyway, so it might as well explore all their potential military uses. Dr. Zimet noted that while the laser being developed for inertial confinement testing would not produce a beam suitable for propagation in the atmosphere, the parallel development of a solid state laser could augment other military development. Dr. Mark and Dr. Zimet also noted that perhaps the most widespread use of lasers in military settings would be as targeting and warning devices. That is, the low-power laser would be used far more often-and by far more nations-than its high-energy cousins. In support of this assertion, both noted that current and planned high-energy laser installations were too large to be mobile, making them unsuitable for the foreseeable future for use by ground vehicles. The door was opened, however, for the use of mid-power lasers that could destroy soft targets such as UAV's or small boats.

Finally, there was some discussion of a realistic "analog" to the airborne laser. The speakers agreed that AWACS aircraft were operationally roughly analogous to the airborne laser. As Dr. Mark pointed out, the Air Force did not plan initially to purchase many AWACS. Air Force leaders thought that it would be better to spend what funds were available on additional fighters. As the Air Force gained more experience with AWACS, senior officers realized that AWACS was an important "enabler" of success in the air superiority battle, and more were ordered. Dr. Mark predicted that the Air Force would go through the same cycle with the airborne laser-first producing a limited number, then discovering their military utility, and ultimately buying more than initially planned.

The airborne laser has been put forward by its developers and defenders as a "leap-ahead" in technology, and as a weapon of great overall usefulness. That claim has yet to be proven correct in tests. However, the issues associated with the development and deployment of such a weapon are central to the effort by the United States to adapt modern technology to warfare, and these issues were raised and carefully considered in and through the papers, presentations, and comments of Dr. Hans Mark and Dr. Elihu Zimet.

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