U.S. defense contractor Northrop Grumman has criticized a recent report issued by the American Physical Society that claims the Airborne Laser system would be ineffective at destroying enemy ballistic missiles during their boost phase, the Abilene Reporter-News reported today (see GSN, July 15).

Northrop Grumman Vice President of Missile Defense Patrick Caruana said some of the challenges facing the ABL system are inherent to any first-time weapons program.  Both Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency plan to examine the APS report, he said.

Bill Ehrie, former commander of Dyess Air Force Base in Texas, said he believed the U.S. Air Force would have already considered the effectiveness of the ABL as a boost-phase defense system.

“I’d like to know how so late in the game they could come up with this conclusion,” said Ehrie, who has not seen the APS report.  “It would seem strange that this issue hadn’t already been considered by the Air Force, given the length of time they’ve been in development with ABL,” he said (Tara Copp, Abilene Reporter-News, July 24).

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