ST. LOUIS, July 31 -- Boeing has been awarded a contract by the Air Force Research Laboratory, at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., for a mobile testbed to enable development of beam control and fire control solutions for tactical high-energy laser weapon systems. The 48-month contract, valued at $23 million, will include ground and airborne demonstrations of integrated sensing and beam control techniques developed by Boeing Laser & Electro-Optical Systems to address targeting in clutter and laser energy propagation and aim-point maintenance. Boeing said the "mobile active targeting resource for integrated experiments" (MATRIX) testbed will use a modular open architecture to integrate advanced sensing subsystems and techniques such as polarimetry, multifunction active illuminators/laser radar, short-pulse imaging, hyper/multispectral sensing and advanced tracking solutions can be applied to a variety of high-energy laser systems. "The MATRIX win is key to our tactical strategy, since it allows us to stay at the forefront of beam control and fire control technologies for tactical high-energy laser systems," said Robert Van Allen, general manager of Boeing-SVS Inc., in Albuquerque, N.M. "The MATRIX program will define beam control/fire control for future tactical HEL systems by evaluating and selecting the optimum sensing, algorithm and beam control approaches to best aid the warfighter, and enable rapid integration of emerging tactical high-energy laser devices." The MATRIX program will be managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory, Directed Energy Directorate, Surveillance Technologies Branch. Air Force-, Boeing- and Pennsylvania State University-affiliated personnel will perform the work in New Mexico, Hawaii and Pennsylvania. For more information, visit: www.boeing.com