The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, along with aerospace and defense contractor Lockheed Martin, strapped a 360-degree laser turret to a jet for the U.S. military’s first test of laser-equipped military aircraft.
Lockheed, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the University of Notre Dame are working on the joint project for the Pentagon’s forward-thinking research arm, the end-goal being “to give 360-degree coverage for high-energy laser weapons operating on military aircraft” via the “Aero-adaptive Aero-optic Beam Control (ABC) turret.”
So far, the company has conducted eight test flights of the turret “designed to allow high-energy lasers to engage enemy aircraft and missiles above, below and behind the aircraft,” according to Lockheed’s website.
“These initial flight tests validate the performance of our ABC turret design, which is an enabler for integrating high energy lasers on military aircraft,” Vice President of Advanced Programs for Lockheed Martin Space Systems Doug Graham said in a press release about the project this week.
The initial tests verified the turret’s air-worthiness thanks to Lockheed’s “flow control and optical compensation technologies,” which prevent turbulence from affecting the aircraft that would otherwise be caused by the fuselage-protruding weapon.
It doesn’t appear that the turret actually fired on anything during the tests, but additional exercises planned over the next year will put the weapon through “increasingly complex operations.”