US Air Force expects to test counter-electronics missile in 2016

On the convention center screen, an animated cruise missile flew over a shadowy cartoon city. A beam of high-power microwaves emitted from its nose — and the target building went dark. More significantly, the ones around it stayed lit up.Developed over the past half decade under a program called Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), the technology for a steerable counter-electronics weapon will be “available” in 2016, said Maj. Gen. Tom Masiello, who commands the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).“It can target electronics well enough to fly over a city and shut down electronics in a single building,” Masiello said Tuesday at the Air Force Association’s annual conference here.

Tests over the past few years have proved the concept; now the AFRL is working to get the technology into a test missile. By 2016, Masiello said, the lab plans to design, develop and test a multishot, multitarget, high-power microwave package aboard an AGM-86 conventional air-launched cruise missile.Beyond that, Masiello said, AFRL’s roadmap for high-power microwave (HPM) weapons calls for integrating the technology onto “maybe, a JASSM-ER-type weapon” in the mid-2020s and aboard “small reusable platforms” such as the F-35 or advanced UAVs by the end of the decade.

It’s unclear whether such weapons will actually enter production; there’s no program of record yet, he said.But his own opinion is clear; he talked about the HPM concept in “Game Changers,” a presentation that also included discussions of hypersonics and autonomous systems.Last year’s test flight of the X-51 hypersonic test vehicle achieved Mach 4.8 and 200 seconds of ramjet power — far beyond the previous record of seven seconds.“That really put hypersonics on the map,” Masiello said. “It really added a lot of momentum to the program.”

As for increasingly sophisticated autonomy, Masiello said, “This has the potential to dwarf everything.”But he took pains to make clear: “It’s not about taking the airman out of the weapon system, it’s about making an effective team.”