Posted on 12/04/2008 11:54:17 PM PST by gandalftb
The US military has carried out the first test-firing of a laser weapon system housed aboard a 747 plane.
The Airborne Laser (ABL) was conceived to shoot down enemy ballistic missiles in the early stages of their flight.
An airborne intercept of an in-flight ballistic missile is planned for 2009.
Scientists are reported to be working out other uses for the flying weapon - which could help secure continued funding. These extra missions include shooting down surface-to-air missiles, cruise missiles and even enemy aircraft.
A laser beam travelled the length of the aircraft at 670 million miles per hour.
It raced from the aft section, through the beam control and fire control system, and out through the nose-mounted turret.
After acquiring and locking on to the target, a second, high-power laser fires a three-to-five-second burst from the turret in the 747's nose.
Against solid-fuel ICBMs the useful range would be about 300km.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
This could be the game-changer.
The Air Force has no user requirements for laser weapons on bomber platforms, and the technology is “still several generations away” from even integrating it onto strike platforms such as gunships, a service acquisition official told "Inside the Air Force" last month.
Gonna come a day, enemy offensive missiles will be useless.
“Gonna come a day, enemy offensive missiles will be useless.”
It will be easier to sleep then but don’t forget even the best gates don’t protect from the enemies within.
Or simply make the missiles highly reflective - just like the mirrors in the laser to begin with...
670 million miles per hour? Why not just say the speed of light?
They will have to rely on low tech, infiltration attacks. But this puts the Iranians and Russians and their ilk out of the air threat business.
What ever cheap shots our enemies do, they'll do it walking.
yeah but Obama won :(
An airborne laser weapon, now that’s change we can believe in.
No mirroring could protect the target as they would not know the precise direction to create a deflection and no mirror would be aerodynamic. Anything airborne would be defenseless.
Don't worry. Fearless Leader will cancel the program before it does any harm to our Asian Marxist comrades or those peace loving jihadi's.
So when are they going to test one mounted on a frikkin shark?
Airborne, that is where we'll dominate, offensive or defensive weapon platforms, aircraft, satellites, whatever. Delivering this kind of power by laser will be technology that others couldn't afford to duplicate, much less airborne.
Obama will kill this program. It is provocative and destabilizing.
Better, yet, he will give the technology to the Chicoms because the world should not have only one superpower.
I wish I was joking. Billy Bob did it first.
I don't believe that anyone was proposing equipping the attacking missiles with (flat) mirrors which would bounce the beam directly back to the airplane from which the laser was shot.
I think that, instead, the proposal was simply to coat the outside of the missile with the same reflective substance as is used on the mirrors of the laser so that any incoming beam would be bounced away and thus rendered harmless.
A flat mirror would, of course, be aerodynamically problematic, but simply "dipping" the outside of the missile in silvery stuff would reduce its absorption of light and thus would reduce its vulnerability to laser beams.
You're welcome.
Regards,
As it turns out, a mirrored surface is no protection against a high-energy laser. It has been demonstrated in lab tests that the energy transfer is enough to destroy a target.
It was not my intent to make any "blanket statements." Notice that I said merely that a mirrored surface would reduce the missile's vulnerability - perhaps even enough to allow it to survive, e.g., a "near miss."
It has been demonstrated in lab tests that the energy transfer is enough to destroy a target.
As long as those lab tests included such real-world factors as the atmosphere's intrinsic opacity, possible interposing clouds, the gradual widening of the collimated beam, etc., I will accept that.
Regards,
Ping
“Hmmm, useful range of 180 miles (300km).”
Yes, and that’s against targets in the atmosphere. There should also be a significant anti-satellite capability with the 747 at altitude. Not much atmosphere above 60,000 or so feet.
They should work on a modified 747 that’d cruise at more like 80,000 feet.
“Gonna come a day, enemy offensive missiles will be useless.”
Perhaps. Lasers tend to overheat, and of course could be swamped by too many targets. No denying that battlefield lasers will be a game changer though.
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