Jul 1 2010
Boeing announced the beam director assembly’s delivery for the High Energy Laser for the U.S. Army. With this action plan, the project has neared demonstration testing, which will be carried out at New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range by next year.
The L-3 Communications division, Integrated Optical Systems Brashear, delivered the assembly to Boeing’s Albuquerque facility. Initial integration of the components will be with a different beam control hardware, and subsequently integration will take place in Huntsville, Ala in the Oshkosh Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck.
The beam control system selects, acquires, and tracks a point on a target and the system simultaneously picks up the beam of laser light from the High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator (HEL TD) device. The control system at the same time reshapes, aligns, and focuses the laser beam on the target.
Program manager of HEL TD, Blaine Beardsley, stated that with Boeing and other partners’ help to the U.S. Army customer, this new technology would be available for supporting warfighters.