FOX News: Lockheed's lasers protect from missiles, rockets

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Lockheed's lasers protect from missiles, rockets Dec 4th 2012, 15:17 A new laser system can destroy improvised rockets, missiles and UAVs attacks by adversaries. High-energy lasers hold enormous potential for battle -- makers call them "directed energy" devices -- and a revolution is afoot to put them in the hands of the warfighter. Lockheed Martin has taken a crucial step toward making lasers relevant and available to the U.S. military. Over the past few months, the company has repeatedly demonstrated a ground-based laser system that can defend against short-range airborne threats. ADAM, Area Defense Anti-Munitions, is portable and designed to defend against attacks from rockets and drones. The 10-kilowatt fiber laser is engineered to destroy targets up to 1.2 miles away and has a tracking range of more than three miles. It can even precisely track targets in cluttered optical environments. "Lockheed Martin has invested in the development of the ADAM system because of the enormous potential effectiveness of high-energy lasers," said Doug Graham, Lockheed Martin's vice president of advanced programs for Strategic and Missile Defense Systems. "We are committed to supporting the transition of directed energy's revolutionary capability to the war fighter." Intended to protect high value areas like forward operating bases, the system is designed to be flexible enough to operate against rockets as a standalone system and to engage unmanned aerial systems with an external radar cue. In testing, the ADAM system has successfully engaged an unmanned aerial system target in flight at nearly 1 mile. It has also destroyed four small-caliber rocket targets at a range of approximately 1.2 miles. The Iron Dome system uses radar to track incoming rockets before launching two Tamir interceptor missiles, each about $60,000, to neutralize the threat. Each defensive launch costs $120,000; over a three-day period Israel spent approximately $29 million on interceptor missiles. Iron Dome advocates cite the technology as cost-effective because the radar distinguishes between missile likely to hit built up areas and those that will not -- meaning Tamirs are launched with discretion. The company says ADAM is intended to be affordable, practical and easy to operate. Its modular architecture combines commercial hardware components with the company's proprietary software. Lockheed Martin has been working in the field of high-energy lasers for more than three decades and counts among its achievements advances in precision pointing and control and line of sight stabilization.

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