AAWSAP DIRD, State of the Art and Evolution of High-Energy Lasers, March 2010

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Figure 15. Mid-Infared Advanced Chemical Laser
In 1983, President Reagan gave his "Star Wars" speech which resulted in the initiation
of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and the start of a very ambitious set of HEL
technology programs which peaked at a billion dollars per year. These efforts produced
significant advances but did not result in the fielding of any weapons or major
demonstration systems. By the mid-1990s, SDI (then the Missile Defense Agency) had
terminated almost all of their HEL programs to better focus on missile development.
The sole surviving MDA HEL program is the Airborne Laser (ABL) which has accounted
for $200M to $500M/yr over the last decade. Its purpose is to place a MW-class
chemical oxygen-iodine laser (COIL) system in a Boeing 747-400F (Figure 16) to
demonstrate boost phase intercept of ICBMs and IRBMs.
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