By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Raytheon Co. said Thursday it was spending heavily on a new generation of solid-state lasers and other speed-of-light weapons that could be fielded by U.S. warships, fighter aircraft and Army vehicles as early as 2010.
"All the parts of our company have really rallied together to put a focus on this," said Michael Booen, a vice president for so-called directed energy weapons at Raytheon's Missile Systems unit in Tucson, Arizona.
At a press briefing to publicize progress in the underlying technology, Booen said the company had put "major profit dollars" into internal research and development as part of what he called a major strategic initiative.
Solid-state lasers could offer the military many advantages over chemical lasers, which are bulky and require large stocks of corrosive and toxic chemicals to power them.
But high-energy chemical lasers, such as one being built aboard a modified Boeing Co. 747-400F freighter, already generate multi-hundred kilowatts of power, compared with only two kilowatts or so by the current generation of their non-chemical cousins.
Boeing is developing a so-called Airborne Laser aircraft under a $1.3 billion contract awarded in 1996 as a missile defense project.
Its on-board oxygen iodine laser is designed to fry ballistic missiles -- such as SCUDs used by Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War -- in their "boost" phase, or near their launch point. The Air Force envisions a fleet of seven such aircraft for rapid deployment anywhere around the globe to defend against ballistic missiles.
Another big defense contractor, Cleveland, Ohio-based TRW Inc. , has demonstrated a high-energy deuterium fluoride laser built for Israel and the U.S. Army to shoot down short-range threats such as Katyusha rockets. It is loaded into several semi-trailer sized containers.
The technology being worked on by Raytheon involves a kind of paradigm shift, said Chan McKearn, project manager of a program aiming to put a high-energy solid-state laser aboard Lockheed Martin Corp.'s next-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft.
"The stage is set for development of weapon class solid-state lasers," McKearn told the press briefing. He cited advances in high-brightness laser diode pumps, low-heat laser materials and proprietary mirrors that refocus distorted light beams after they go through a power amplifier.
Booen and McKearn said Raytheon planned to develop a compact 25-kilowatt solid-state laser by the end of 2004 as part of an Air Force advanced research competition likely to pit it against TRW among others.
"Probably a few years after that, we'll be at 100 (kilowatts)," Booen said. By the end of this decade, he added, "we'll be putting these things on fighters, Navy ships and Army vehicles."
"It's got the support of the CEO. It has the support of the president of the company. It has the support of the presidents of the business units," he said.
Booen declined to say how much was being earmarked for the research by Raytheon, a Lexington, Massachusetts-based maker of missiles and weapons control system.
He said the U.S. military was thirsting for such "ultra-precision" weapons to limit civilian casualties and to defend against small high-speed threats such as sea-skimming cruise missiles.
"I don't think it's Buck Rogers anymore," he said. "I think it's reality."