It is now four years since the U.S. flew a cruise missile over an office building and caused all the computer screens inside to go blank. That was a successful test of a high-power microwave (HPM) weapon by the U.S. Air Force on the Utah Test Range. The same team has just received new contracts worth $10 million to move forward with the technology, but, like other directed-energy weapons, translating promise into operational reality is taking a long time.
“I think things will now move forward faster than in the last couple of years,” Steve Downie, site director for Raytheon Advanced Missile Systems in Albuquerque, New Mexico, told AIN. His facility produces the radiating payloads for the Counter-electronics High-powered microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) missile.
The power source for the payloads comes from the nearby government-owned Sandia Laboratories—a Marx high-voltage generator. The whole package is integrated by Boeing onto surplus AGM-86 air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs).
But Downie admitted that the new 18-month contract only requires the production of two more payloads that are ready for flight certification. No flight tests are yet scheduled. It seems like only halting progress for a weapon that has a unique ability to destroy critical infrastructure housed within population centers, without causing civilian casualties.
“The sponsoring Air Force Research Laboratories thought that enhancements were necessary to the previous designs,” Downie said. He declined to give details. The sort of criteria that might be in play here are the range over which the weapon is effective, and therefore the power required; the frequencies and duration of transmission; and how to isolate the payload so that it can’t harm the electronics of the host platform.
Downie did say that CHAMP can emit up to 100 pulses over a period of some minutes while the host platform is cruising along. The 2012 flight tests are reported to have blacked out seven targets in succession.
He also confirmed that the weapon is designed to cause three levels of damage: the minimum requires a reboot; next, the system requires some minor repairs; and, most seriously, it can completely destroy an electronic system. Of course, the level of damage will also depend on the extent that the targeted systems are shielded, but that topic was also off-limits for discussion with the Raytheon manager. But he did say that the 2012 flight tests were successful against a hardened chemical/biological weapons facility.
The long-range Lockheed Martin joint air-to-surface standoff missile (JASSM) that can be carried by fighter aircraft has been suggested as an operational platform for CHAMP. But Downie cautioned that it could still be many years before operational weapons are fielded. However, according to New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich, “We’re at the point where this is now mature technology…we run the risk of chasing perfection instead of deploying.”
