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98 so u R c e s o f we a p o n sy s T e m s In n o v a T Io n In T h e depaR TmenT o f defense
1962 and 1967, from $10 million to more than $60 million. 87 Out of this wartime
effort emerged the first generation of smart weapon systems that combined
conventional explosives—free-fall bombs and other ordnance—and precision
electronic guidance technologies capable of filtering, processing, computing,
and transmitting target information almost instantaneously during flight. The
GBU–15 glide bomb, which entered production under contract to Rockwell
International in 1983, consisted of a television camera or infrared imaging
sensor (for nighttime deployment) placed on the front of a general-purpose,
2,000-pound bomb and a small data transmitter fixed to its back end. Electronic
display and sensor control in the cockpit of the carrying aircraft enabled the
bomb to be delivered to the target with precision accuracy. Similar weapons
technologies that entered service during this period included a new family of
500- and 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs used to destroy reinforced concrete
targets and the GBU–89 antitank and antipersonnel mine dispenser. 88
Unlike Eglin, which continued to support the development of conventional
ordnance, the Special Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base diversified into
new fields outside its core capabilities of mating nuclear weapons technologies to
aircraft and missile delivery systems and conducting environmental impact studies
of atomic warfare. Out of the center’s nuclear effects testing and simulation studies
emerged a major program, located in the new Weapons Laboratory established
at Kirtland in the early 1960s, to develop high-energy laser and particle-beam
weapon systems for airborne and space-based applications. Though highly
speculative, this research program complemented a much larger, coordinated
effort among other federal agencies, universities, and industrial firms to develop
an interconnected network of tracking satellites and orbiting laser weapon
platforms to repel a ballistic missile attack. Later known as the Strategic Defense
Initiative (SDI), this controversial program and its institutional antecedents
consumed a significant share of the in-house resources and technical personnel
at Kirtland’s Weapons Laboratory throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In 1974, for
example, weapons-oriented laser R&D consumed one-quarter of the Weapons
Laboratory’s technical manpower. By 1987, SDI projects alone consumed 60
percent of the laboratory’s budget. 89
In the early 1970s, researchers in the Weapons Laboratory began studying
the output properties and operating features of the gas-dynamic carbon dioxide
laser. Despite its high-power capabilities, however, the carbon dioxide laser proved
too inefficient for practical use. The laboratory investigated other configurations
throughout the remainder of the decade. Chemical lasers, for example, showed
87 “New Organization Planned to Stabilize Arms R&D, Funding,” Aerospace Technology 21 (25
March 1968): 98–99.
88 E. Ulsamer, “The Steady Evolution of Armaments,” Air Force Magazine 68 (December 1985):
79–81; C. F. Surba and D. Ballou, “Armament Division at Eglin AFB,” National Defense 71 ( July-August
1986): 48–49. See also “Non-Nuclear Research Under Way at USAF Laboratory,” Aviation Week and
Space Technology 123 (2 December 1985): 161–68; and C. Rabb, “Air Force Labs Work to Make Today’s
Innovations Tomorrow’s Routine,” Defense Electronics 18 (September 1986): 95–100.
89 “Weapons Lab Plays Key Nuclear Role,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 101 (15 July 1974):
287; Weitze, Installations and Facilities, 305.