This is the first blog post I am making on Vivaldi, and I hope you enjoy this new blog!.
I hope this photo gets your attention. I don’t recall where it came from, so I can’t provide proper attribution. I greatly admired the pilot’s skill. He must have been steering that BUFF by using the cross-wind crab control on the landing gear.
I was pleased today to hear that the U.S. Navy is about to field a shipboard laser weapon constructed by coupling a number of solid-state lasers together. On the other hand, I was saddened that the U.S. Senate cut off funding to the Navy’s Jefferson Lab that might have seen the Free-Electron Laser (FEL) and the General Atomics railgun brought to completion. The Air Force would be wise to take over the development of the FEL, if it isn’t working on its own version.
To quote from a paper by researchers from the Lab, “An airborne megawatt (MW) average power Free-Electron Laser (FEL) is now a possibility. In the process of shrinking the FEL parameters to fit on ship, a surprisingly lightweight and compact design has been achieved. There are multiple motivations for using a FEL for a high-power airborne system for Defense and Security:
• Diverse mission requirements can be met by a single system.
• The MW of light can be made available with any time structure for time periods from microseconds to hours, i.e. there is a nearly unlimited magazine.
• The wavelength of the light can be chosen to be from the far infrared (IR) to the near ultraviolet (UV) thereby best meeting mission requirements.
• The FEL light can be modulated for detecting the same pattern in the small fraction of light reflected from the target resulting in greatly enhanced targeting control.
The entire MW class FEL including all of its subsystems can be carried by large commercial size airplanes or on an airship. Adequate electrical power can be generated on the plane or airship to run the FEL as long as the plane or airship has fuel to fly. The light from the FEL will work well with relay mirror systems. The required R&D to achieve the MW level is well understood. The coupling of the capabilities of an airborne FEL to diverse mission requirements provides unique opportunities.”
The best thing about the FEL is that it does not need chemicals to generate light, and if mounted on a B-52, would diminish or eliminate the need to rush the ‘Next Generation Bomber’ into production. Think of the time and money savings. Think of the new lease on life for the BUFF. Think of the terror it would instill in our enemies as it takes out any airborne weapon they might launch at it. Think of the fact that the BUFF was designed for high altitude flight, not sneaking in under the radar or requiring a fighter escort.
