The Bush administration's concept of ballistic missile defense began taking shape when top Air Force officials asked Congress for additional 153 million dollars to finance development of an air-borne laser (ABL) capable of shooting down missiles.
"We think it's a revolutionary capability," Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael Ryan told a Senate subcommittee that handles defense appropriations on Wednesday.
"We think to be able to put a high-powered laser, to be able to acquire, track and destroy missiles in their ascent phase, is terribly important to future capabilities in defense and force protection," he added.
The request represents a 65-percent boost for the program that had its ebbs and flows in the 1990s and was initially allocated 234 million dollars in the current financial year.
The plan calls for mounting a laser on a Boeing-747 aircraft, which would patrol near suspected enemy missile launch sites.
It would autonomously detect launches with on-board infrared sensors, track the missile with highly accurate, low-power lasers, and fire its high-energy laser to destroy it by tearing through its metal core and causing it to fall apart under strong in-flight pressures, according to Air Force documents.
"Under this scheme, the warheads and destroyed missile components fall on enemy territory, making the aggressor's nation vulnerable to the effects of whatever warhead they employed," the Air Force said in its 1997 issues book. "As such, the ABL will provide a strong deterrence against the use of weapons of mass destruction."
Ryan, who argued air-borne lasers "will revolutionize some of the ways we wage war," said the Pentagon wanted to test a prototype of the system as early as 2003.
"We certainly want to do that and hold to that schedule, and hence that's the reason that we put more money into it," he explained.
The plane would have to be no farther than 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the target to be effective.
Because of these limitations, military experts believe air-borne lasers could be effective against missiles fired by North Korea and Iraq, provided no-fly zones over Iraq's north and south remain in effect.
However, they could be less effective against Iran, one of the targets of US President George W. Bush's plan to deploy a national missile defense system.
In one of the crucial speeches of his presidency, Bush vowed last to deploy a shield against ballistic missile attacks by states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- WASHINGTON (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
