NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – 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."
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