Artist's rendering of the SHiELD. (Image courtesy of Northrupp Grumman.)
To translate that into plain-speak, Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Air Force are looking to add a laser countermeasure system to their fighter jets.
For anyone who’s seen the 1980s cult-classic Real Genius, this sounds like a terrestrial version of the movie’s ambitious Crossbow laser weapon.
According to Northrop Grumman, the contract calls for the company to “develop and produce the beam control portion of an airborne laser weapon demonstration system.”
The system, aptly named Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD) is still in the early development stage. Nevertheless, Northrop’s engineers have started to imagine the system being housed in a pod attached to an aircraft and having the ability to fire its weapon even when travelling at supersonic speeds.
While there are many parts of a laser weapon system, Northrup’s role in the project will be the design of the weapon’s beam control system, a critical component that’s essentially the brains of the weapon.
When in flight, the beam control system would be used to locate any atmospheric disturbances that might affect the laser beam’s shape, acquire tracking data on incoming threats, calculate where the aiming point for neutralizing a target and finally, shaping the beam as its leaves the weapon.
The Air Force and Northrop Grumman expect that flight tests of the SHiELD system will begin in 2019.
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