Inside Defense:
The Missile Defense Agency this year plans to select the best of three “low-power” lasers being designed by industry for follow-on development, but the agency’s budget documents show a laser potentially powerful enough to disable ballistic missiles in their boost phase is not planned to be put on contract until 2023.
The agency is seeking $61 million in fiscal year 2019 for directed-energy demonstrator development, according to documents released this week. Last year, MDA had projected the program would get $76 million in FY-19. The reduction to directed-energy efforts “reflects a realignment of funds to continue focus on increasing [Ballistic Missile Defense] system reliability to build warfighter confidence,” the documents state.
The demonstrator program aims to pair a high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft with a low-power laser. MDA awarded contracts last year worth about $9 million each to Lockheed Martin, General Atomics and Boeing, respectively, to integrate and test a laser on an unmanned aerial vehicle as part of phase one of the Low Power Laser Demonstrator (LPLD) effort.
