Air Force Special Operations Command is on track to equip an AC-130J Ghostrider
gunship with a laser weapon by the end of the decade, officials said May
25.
Working alongside Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren in Virginia,
the service has wrapped up the first phase of a two-part study that will give
the command greater clarity on the maturity of commercially available systems
and potential design concepts, said Lt. Col. John DiSebastian, director of
fixed-wing tech insertion at Special Operations Command.
“We have
identified our partners that have responded to our [request for] information
[and] we are in the process of evaluating that,” he said at Special Operations
Forces International Conference, sponsored by the National Defense Industrial
Association. “We have not downselected away from any, or chosen any. We are
still, as part of this architecture, looking at what is the best operational
capability and determining which vendors can support that.”
AFSOC plans
to use commercially available technology to develop the laser but it will be the
lead integrator of the system, he said during a panel discussion at the annual
Special Operations Forces Industry Conference.
more
