Operational Experience with The GTS-LHC Ion Source and Future Developments of The CERN Ion Injector

Since 2010 the GTS-LHC source delivers lead ions for heavy ion physics at the LHC. Several modifications allowed the improvement the source reliability and the beam stability. The attempts to improve the beam intensity were less successful. The different modifications and actual performance figures will be presented in this paper. In addition to the heavy ion physics program of the LHC new ion species will be requested for different experiments in the future. The fixed target experiment NA61 requires primary argon and xenon beams. And a future biomedical facility asks for light ions in the range helium to neon. Approaches to prepare these beams and to modify the ion injector towards a light ion front end are presented.