Funding cuts ground missile defense system

Work has ended on a futuristic airborne missile defense system built mostly in Southern California after more than 15 years of development and $5 billion in federal funding.

In what was once considered the stuff of science fiction, the airborne laser program involved a Boeing 747 jumbo jet equipped with an advanced tracking system and a massive laser gun on its nose to identify and obliterate enemy missiles as they blast off.

It was conceived as part of a multibillion-dollar defense system that would shield the U.S. from missile attacks. But the program experienced a series of cost overruns and delays. It never went beyond testing.

The program began in 1996. At its peak, the program employed hundreds of physicists, chemists, computer scientists, aerodynamicists and engineers across Southern California.

But after years of development and testing, funding dried up, and the Air Force has confirmed that the 747 took off from a runway at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert for the last time. The jumbo jet was sent to a military aircraft “boneyard” in Arizona, where it will be kept in storage.

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency had asked Congress for more funding for the airborne laser program this year but didn’t receive enough to keep it going.

The ambitious airborne laser program involved a heavily modified Boeing 747 jet carrying a chemical laser. The plane shot a super-heated, basketball-size laser beam out of a rotating nose turret at a missile traveling 4,000 mph.

It was powerful enough to destroy targets in seconds. It was designed to wipe out the missile and send the warhead falling back onto the enemy launch site.

The airborne laser had its first major success in February 2010, when it shot down a Scud-like missile launched from an ocean platform over the Pacific near Point Mugu, Calif.

But Pentagon officials declined to say how far the aircraft was from the missile, saying the information was a military secret.

“The reality is that you would need a laser something like 20 to 30 times more powerful than the chemical laser in the plane right now to be able to get any distance from the launch site to fire,” then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said at a congressional hearing in May 2010.