Project Excalibur was a Cold War–era research program to develop an X-ray laser system as a ballistic missile defense for the United States. The concept involved packing large numbers of expendable X-rays around a nuclear device, which would orbit in space. During an attack, the device would be detonated, with the X- rays released focused by each laser to destroy multiple incoming target missiles. Because the system would be deployed above the Earth’s atmosphere, theX-rays could reach missiles thousands of kilometers away. The project officially continued until 1992 when its last planned test, Greenwater, was cancelled.
About Project Excalibur in brief
Project Excalibur was a Cold War–era research program to develop an X-ray laser system as a ballistic missile defense for the United States. The concept involved packing large numbers of expendable X-rays around a nuclear device, which would orbit in space. During an attack, the device would be detonated, with the X- rays released focused by each laser to destroy multiple incoming target missiles. Because the system would be deployed above the Earth’s atmosphere, theX-rays could reach missiles thousands of kilometers away, allowing them to target the MIRV ICBMs before they deployed their warheads. The project officially continued until 1992 when its last planned test, Greenwater, was cancelled. The conceptual basis of short-wavelength lasers, using X- Rays and gamma rays, is the same as that of their visible-light counterparts. There were discussions of such devices as early as 1960, the year the first ruby laser was demonstrated. In June 1977, two well-known Soviet researchers, Igor Sobel’man and Vlad Letokhov, displayed a film of calcium and titanium exposed to the plasmas of chlorine. They were careful to point out that the results were very preliminary, and further study was required. George Chapline Jr. was a member of Teller’s O-Group when he said he was observing the calcium plasma lasing in a calcium plasma. In 1974, the University of Paris-Sud announced lased in an aluminum plasma created by a pulse of laser light, but, once again, the results had been regarded skeptically by other labs.
By late 1976 they had all but given up on them. They commissioned a report by Physical Dynamics, which outlined possible uses of such a laser, including space-based weapons. The announcement caused great excitement, but it was soon overshadowed by the fact that no other labs could reproduce the results, and the announcement was soon forgotten. In 1987, the infighting became public, leading to an investigation on whether LLNL had misled the government about the ExCalibur concept. In a 60 Minutes interview in 1988, Teller attempted to walk out rather than answer questions about the lab’s treatment of a fellow worker who questioned the results. Further tests revealed additional problems, and in 1988 the budget was cut dramatically. In 1989, the project was cancelled and the funding for X-Ray laser research was dropped in favor of the more promising free electron laser. In the 1990s, the US Department of Defense announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) would replace ABM systems. The SDI was announced by Ronald Reagan in 1983. In 1986, Reagan refused to give up the possibility of proof-testing SDI technology with nuclear testing in space, and this influenced the 1986 Reykjavík Summit, where he refused to given up the idea of nuclear testing. In 1983, Reagan ultimately to announce the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983. The SDI was launched in response to the Soviet Union.
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This page is based on the article Project Excalibur published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
