Air Force Research targets insurgents' bombs.

• Author: Pinchak, Andrea
• Position: UPFRONT

Airborne lasers. Electromagnetic Barriers. Born Bots. They sound like weapons used against the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars. Yet, there's no science fiction here. All are current Air Force Research Laboratory technologies, some of which already have been deployed to Iraq.

AFRL developed and delivered what it calls Born Bots. These are small, remotely controlled robots that disable and dispose of roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices used by insurgents in Iraq against U.S. troops.

"The war fighters love them," says Les McFawn, executive director of AFRL. "They have asked for more of these because, obviously, it keeps them out of harm's way."

The technologies available to detect IEDs, however, need to be improved, McFawn tells National Defense. "There is an issue with finding IEDs. If you found one, the Born Bot is great, but clearly there are a lot of these IEDs that we're not finding. So we need some techniques for either finding them or disrupting their placement."

Another AFRL effort got under way in June, when the lab awarded a $1.5 million contract to Alliant Techsystems to develop high-power microwave technologies that will be capable of disabling a variety of IEDs, says Juvenito R. Garcia, a spokesman for AFRL directed energy directorate, at Kirkland Air Force Base, N.M.

AFRL and Alliant, under a previous agreement, had developed a prototype system, called Scorpion I. In tests at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., the Scorpion I neutralized approximately 74 percent of the IEDs it encountered. "We are proud of that achievement and are confident that we will continue to mature the technology with the goal of developing a fieldable and deployable system as rapidly as possible," said Alliant spokesman Bryce Hallowell.

Under the most recent contract, AFRL and Alliant will adapt the Scorpion I design to develop a portable device called Scorpion II, which will find and disarm IEDs.

These projects are only small pieces of a broader Defense Department effort to develop and field anti-IED technologies.

An organization dubbed the Joint IED Defeat Task Force is charged with coordinating all Defense Department projects aimed at countering IEDs. While the services sometimes pursue their own efforts, the task force often coordinates and tries to consolidate redundant development and production programs. In fiscal year 2005, the task force spent $1.4 billion on new technologies.

In March, the task force issued a solicitation for industry bids...