Note: The original version of this story mistakenly identified the the SAC as the SASC. Aerospace Daily regrets the error.

The Airborne Laser (ABL) is still on target for an August 2009 in-flight ballistic missile kill test, as long as the Senate can mitigate a proposed $250 million budget cut by the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), Boeing told a group of reporters during an ABL program update Sept. 4.

"We'll be informing those [Senate Apropriations Committee] members with facts about the program in the hopes they will fully fund the program and give us money for next year," said Greg Hyslop, Boeing's vice president and program director for ABL. "At this point, the level of cuts proposed by the HASC would significantly delay shoot-down," resulting in a two-year schedule slip. "We need the presidential budget request to stay on track," he said.

News of the slip emerged earlier this year (DAILY, May 18).

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) asked for $550 million in its 2008 budget request, which was then trimmed back to $300 million once it passed through the hands of the HASC authorizers.

A July 9 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report predicted continued trouble for the program, saying that "recent changes in funding profiles for both the ABL and for the MDA's new kinetic kill vehicle reinforce the uncertainty related to the ABL program" (DAILY, July 25).

The CRS report also mentioned forward basing issues, which Hyslop addressed directly. "We've done work with Air Combat Command (ACC) on the footprint required to forward base a chemical base facility," he said. "ABL has developed a prototype chemical mixing facility on a C-17 that could give us that capability as well."

Hyslop said that the Japanese have expressed "great interest in ABL," although there has been no formal action between governments regarding forward basing. "We're looking at how the Japanese government can help us."

The U.S. Air Force has said it would like a squadron of seven ABL aircraft. "It remains to be seen if that's enough," Hyslop said. "ACC published an update to its concept of operations earlier in the year, and we continue to work with them on that."

Although Hyslop would not comment on the exact cost of ABL, he said "they will be expensive aircraft ... probably in the $1 billion frame." However, "there's a wide band of uncertainty about those estimates," he added.

Boeing recently announced the achievement of a program milestone: the successful in-flight test demonstration of the ABL's battle management and beam- and fire-control systems' ability to complete the full series of steps required to support a ballistic missile intercept.

The low power tests were run on a modified Boeing 747-400F and used infrared sensors to find an instrumented target board located on "Big Crow," a U.S. Air Force NC-135E test aircraft.

A Northrop Grumman high-power chemical laser will be installed in the ABL 747-400 and put through extensive ground and flight-tests, leading up to its first intercept test against an in-flight ballistic missile.