TRW Capistrano Test Site
Allen Thomson
>I was out exploring wilderness areas in Southern California today, when I
>stumbled across a Cold War outpost...
>
[snip]
>(The Marine Corps is part of the Department of the Navy.) So, anyone out
>there know anything about this place I stumbled across?
>
I believe they tested high-power lasers there in the late 1970s,
and probably into the Star Wars period. Dim memory says that there
have been a couple of AWST articles on the facility.
Paul Vincent McGinnis
stumbled across a Cold War outpost...
I had seen Avenida Pico in San Clemente, California on a road map, and
wondered what was up at the end of the road. The area looked promising --
coastal hills away from houses, so I stopped by the area today. I was
enjoying the warm spring weather, the birds, the flowers in bloom, and the
green hills of Talega Canyon. As I was driving up there, I was hoping that
I would find some public land where I could hike and do some reading.
After a nice drive through the hills east of San Clemente, the road eventually
ended and I wasn't prepared for what I found -- signs reading "TRW Capistrano
Test Site" and "No Trespassing - grounds are under security watch". I saw
a decent sized installation with 3 large radomes, numerous radar antennas,
buildings, chemical handling equipment, and a building with large pipes
coming up from the ground and going back in to the ground (geothermal power?).
The signs said that the property was under the control of TRW Defense Space
Systems Group, which was quite interesting, considering the spy satellites
and other classified programs that part of TRW is involved with. Another
interesting sign read "Laptop computers, cellular phones, and short or long
wave communications devices are prohibited on this site" along with the
more familiar prohibitions of cameras and other recording devices.
I studied the place with my binoculars from outside the barbed wire fence
and further away on Avenida Pico. After about 20 minutes at the security
gate "eyeballing" the complex and the 2 pickup trucks with TRW security
men, I left, because there wasn't anything interesting happening.
I have never heard of this facility before -- I checked my map collection
and found that the land is adjacent to a naval reservation that is part
of the Marine Corps' Camp Pendleton base, suggesting possible connections with
NAVSPACECOM (Naval Space Command) or NAVINT (Office of Naval Intelligence).
(The Marine Corps is part of the Department of the Navy.) So, anyone out
there know anything about this place I stumbled across?
Paul McGinnis / TRA...@cup.portal.com / Pau...@aol.com
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John Pike
laser devices for over two decades.
NACL - Navy/ARPA Advanced Chemical Laser - a 400 Kilowatt 10.6
micron carbon dioxide gas dynamic laser installed at the TRW San
Juan Capistrano test facility succeeded in destroying target drones
in the mid 1970's, and was superseded by MIRACL in the early
1980's.
MIRACL - Mid Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser - a 2.2 Megawatt 3.8
micron infrared deuterium fluoride chemical laser built for the
Navy by TRW. Tested at the company's San Juan Capistrano facility,
MIRACL destroyed several airborne targets. But MIRACL suffered from
very poor beam quality, about a factor of 70 worse than the
diffraction limit. In conjunction with the 1.8 meter Sea Light
Beam Director, MIRACL was moved in 1987 to the White Sands test
range for laser lethality testing.
ALPHA - This IR chemical laser device was completed in 1986 with
testing initiated in 1987 at the TRW facility at San Juan
Capistrano, to demonstrate a performance goal of 2 Megawatts power
with beam quality necessary to establish the feasibility of
chemical lasers for BMD applications. The Clinton Administration is
financing the development and demonstration of the major subsystems
of Alpha, which is intended to lead to an operational constellation
of a half-dozen orbital battle-stations by the year 2006.
Dick Buenneke
wrote:
> ALPHA - This IR chemical laser device was completed in 1986 with
> testing initiated in 1987 at the TRW facility at San Juan
> Capistrano, to demonstrate a performance goal of 2 Megawatts power
> with beam quality necessary to establish the feasibility of
> chemical lasers for BMD applications. The Clinton Administration is
> financing the development and demonstration of the major subsystems
> of Alpha, which is intended to lead to an operational constellation
> of a half-dozen orbital battle-stations by the year 2006.
About five years ago, SDIO (now BMDO) hosted a tour by Soviet (now
Russian) laser experts of Alpha. The Sovs also got a tour of neutral
particle beam experiments at LANL.
Although the NPB line was always fairly open, TRW wouldn't let the press
cover the Alpha visit. So the secrecy about the Capistrano site may be
caused by political factors (an reports that the laser never really
worked) than security concerns.
--
Richard H. Buenneke Jr. Tel: (310) 393-0411, Ext. 7382
RAND Graduate School Fax: (310) 451-7038
of Policy Studies Internet: buen...@rand.org
1700 Main Street
P.O. Box 2138 "All opinions are mine alone
Santa Monica, Calif. 90407-2138 All facts speak for themselves"
"If you think about it, L.A. is really very analog" -- Tim Boyle, San Francisco multimedia booster
Dean Bakeris
> San Juan Capistrano has been the primary test site for high energy
> laser devices for over two decades.
>
[snip]
> ALPHA - This IR chemical laser device was completed in 1986 with
> testing initiated in 1987 at the TRW facility at San Juan
> Capistrano, to demonstrate a performance goal of 2 Megawatts power
> with beam quality necessary to establish the feasibility of
> chemical lasers for BMD applications. The Clinton Administration is
> financing the development and demonstration of the major subsystems
> of Alpha, which is intended to lead to an operational constellation
> of a half-dozen orbital battle-stations by the year 2006.
Really? The Clinton Administration? The present one - the Democrats?!!
Do you have more details?
Dean Bakeris
AlliedSignal Aerospace
--
My opinions are my own - not my company's, country's, or world's.
John Pike
> In article <3losiq$m...@clarknet.clark.net>, John Pike <john...@clark.net>
> [snip]
> > of a half-dozen orbital battle-stations by the year 2006.
>
> Really? The Clinton Administration? The present one - the Democrats?!!
Well, I was pretty amazed myself, but Bill has kept the Star Wars in
Star Wars.
> Do you have more details?
see: Department of Defense, Director of Defense Research and
Engineering, "Defense Technology Plan," September 1994,
page 11b-1:
"... High energy lasers used to achieve early boost phase destruction
of ballistic missiles at long range offer a potential counter to these
threats....also offer the potential of space control through satellite
negation..."
page 11b-3:
"Under Alpha/LAMP Integration (ALI), BMDO has a major effort to
demonstrate end-to-end ground operation of a space-based HF chemical
laser concept..... The Star LITE program will demonstrate the fully
integrated operation of the ALI high power beam train and HABE ATP/FC
in a full spaceflight configuration. The ground demonstration is
scheduled for FY00, a flight demonstration of the ground demo hardware
could take place in FY01..."
page 11b-8:
"Table 11b-1 Roadmap of Technology Objectives for Directed Energy
Weapons.....Partial constellation (6 satellites) of operations SBL
systems to be complete in 2006 (if FY00 decision to proceed)"
Dean Bakeris
wrote:
> Bak...@thorin.atsc.allied.com (Dean Bakeris) wrote:
> > In article <3losiq$m...@clarknet.clark.net>, John Pike <john...@clark.net>
> ...
> > [snip]
> > > of a half-dozen orbital battle-stations by the year 2006.
> >
> > Really? The Clinton Administration? The present one - the Democrats?!!
>
> Well, I was pretty amazed myself, but Bill has kept the Star Wars in
> Star Wars.
>
> > Do you have more details?
>
[snip again]
>
> "Under Alpha/LAMP Integration (ALI), BMDO has a major effort to
> demonstrate end-to-end ground operation of a space-based HF chemical
> laser concept..... The Star LITE program will demonstrate the fully
> integrated operation of the ALI high power beam train and HABE ATP/FC
> in a full spaceflight configuration. The ground demonstration is
> scheduled for FY00, a flight demonstration of the ground demo hardware
> could take place in FY01..."
>
I saw a technical specification on Star LITE a few years back while I was
working on an NRL project. The thing would spew out all sorts of toxic
gases whenever it fired. That was - if it survived the launch. The optics
were pretty darn fragile.
dman...@gmail.com
> In article <3lo999$6...@jobe.shell.portal.com> tra...@shell.portal.com (Paul Vincent McGinnis) writes:
> >stumbled across a Cold War outpost...
> >
>
> >(The Marine Corps is part of the Department of the Navy.) So, anyone out
> >there know anything about this place I stumbled across?
> >
>
> and probably into the Star Wars period. Dim memory says that there
> have been a couple of AWST articles on the facility.
2 saturn 5 rocket motors for water heaters to do steam vacuum chamber evacuation, 2 foot stainless steel walls around the sandbox. I can only imagine what we have now? I sleep at night.
Just sayin.
William Mook
On 2700 acres TRW has built an advanced field test laboratory for some of the most advanced scientific concepts of our time! Rocket engines developed and tested at CTS has played an important role in the manned exploration of space.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkfhEq9Al4M - 1972
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUFnjG4NDlQ&t=6m20s - 1942
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAY5OQQtSjo - 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdzaO0XlHhI - TRW 1959 film.