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MIRACL is the US Navy’s only successful directed energy weapon, originally built to shoot down anti-ship cruise missiles. It is a megawatt-class continuous wave chemical laser and has been used to test anti-ballistic missiles and anti-satellite laser weapons. The laser has not been mass-produced or installed on ships but is housed at the High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility in New Mexico. MIRACL uses ethylene and nitrogen trifluoride as fuel and oxidizer, and helium and deutrium to create the laser medium. The laser has successfully shot down cruise missiles and was controversially used to test ground-based laser weapons on a Navy satellite. The Army and Navy are interested in directed energy weapons as the future of warfare.
The provocatively named MIRACL is the United States Navy’s only known successful directed energy weapon. It stands for “Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser” and was originally built to shoot down anti-ship cruise missiles, but its use has since been extended to test aspects of anti-ballistic missiles and anti-satellite laser weapons. . Built by TRW Incorporated, whose defense wing was acquired by Northrop Grumman in 2002, MIRACL is a spin-off of Ronald Reagan’s famed Star Wars project, notorious for consuming billions of dollars with little useful hardware in return. MIRACL has not yet been mass-produced or installed on ships, but its permanent home is the High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility (HELSTF), at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.
MIRACL is the world’s first megawatt-class continuous wave chemical laser. MIRACL’s method of operation can be compared to a rocket engine, where the fuel, ethylene (C2H4) is burned with an oxidizer, nitrogen trifluoride (NF3). In the subsequent energetic reaction, the free fluorine atoms are one of the combustion products. Downstream of the combustion reaction, helium and deutrium are combined with fluorine.
Deutrium combines with fluorine to create deutrium fluoride, while helium modulates the reaction. The detritus flour is the laser medium, which intensely magnifies the light as it bounces back and forth within the laser cavity. A semi-splintered mirror released the resulting optical energy into a focused beam with a capacity of over one megawatt, equivalent to 100,000 typical light bulbs, but focused into a beam only 14 cm (~5 inches) in diameter.
Tests of MIRACL have shown that it can actually shoot down cruise missiles. In 1997, amid much controversy, laser was fired on an old Navy satellite to measure the effects of ground-based laser weapons on satellite electronics. The test was successful. The controversy arose from concerns that the laser test was violating treaties against the use of weapons in space. Anti-satellite strikes could be critical to any future war, where all major players would depend on satellite reconnaissance and navigation for all warfare functions.
MIRACL is definitely the beginning of something bigger: both the Army and Navy have shown great interest in directed energy weapons and see them as the future of warfare. Because they don’t consume ammo, they are cheaper to use than conventional handguns. The fact that photons travel at the speed of light is also interesting.
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