1990

Phillips Laboratory Stands up at Kirtland AFB

Over the course of the 1980s, the Air Force lab system had ballooned to over a dozen labs performing related, if not redundant, R&D. In 1989 a Defense Management Review study authorized by Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney indicated there were too many small laboratories, and that to improve efficiency and eliminate unwanted duplication, the Air Force's 13 labs would merge into 4 so-called "super laboratories." The Air Force Space Technology Center and its three laboratories, Geophysics, Astronautics, and Weapons, merged to create one "Super Lab."

The Cold War was only recently ended in 1990 when Phillips Laboratory stood up here at Kirtland. Its core mission remained similar to that under Space Technology Center, that being research and developing components of space support and control, force application and enhancement, and certain corporate responsibilities. Space support dealt with advancing launch, orbit transfer, and satellite control technologies. Space control centered around space surveillance, counterspace, and survivability of assets. Force application featured missile offensives and defenses. Force enhancement involved communication, navigation, surveillance, environmental warning, and threat warning/attack assessment.

Phillips Lab led the way in advanced lasers, HPM, and High Energy Plasma programs, as well as in satellite sciences, space debris, atmospheric compensation and adaptive optics, space structures, ballistic missile technology and surveillance, and propulsion technologies.