Boeing's Airborne Laser shines a light on a missile mid-flight, says 'Hey, there!'
By Tim Stevens 
posted August 14th 2009 10:58AM
posted August 14th 2009 10:58AM
As fans of Real Genius, we're as intrigued as you are by the concept of a flying laser the size (and shape) of a Boeing 747-400F, and have been tracking Boeing's test-flights of its Airborne Laser platform quite closely. The jet is designed to intercept and destroy missiles mid-flight, and a recent test showed that it can manage that first bit -- but it still hasn't achieved the second. In a test on August 10, it tracked and fired upon an in-flight target that was packing sensors; the sensors confirmed the hit and so the test was successful, but for some reason Boeing opted to not crank it up to the gigawatts and knock the thing down. That test is apparently planned for a "lethal demonstration against a boosting threat-representative ballistic missile target" later this year, so until then this thing is little more effective than a multi-billion dollar Care Bear. Boeing, we dig that targets of this sort are probably not cheap, but get on with the program already, yeah?
[Via The Huntsville Times]
How about a little patience, guys? Walk before you run, etc.
Well, how about a price cut then? Maybe a larger hard drive in the thing? Throw me a bone!
Patience?? Thing has been in planning and development for 13 years.. http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/1998/news_release_981113d.html Fire the damn laser already!
Are they afraid they'll miss and send a beam of laser off to the next solar system and start a war? Come to think of it, that would suck.
Misfire may equal popcorn!
Care bear stare ftw?
PEW PEW
No! Overused! No!
But come on its firing lurv
"Sir, should I fire the freak'n laser beam?"..."Crank that, solider boy!"
They better make as many of these as they can. Whoever is going to end up shooting at us isn't going to fire off just one missile.
This is an excellent point.
From what I remember of this when it was first announced, it is supposed to be able to lock on and destroy like 10 separate targets per minute, tracking multiple and moving from one to the next once destruction is confirmed.
It's designed to take some of the pressure off of the exisiting missle defense shield and hit targets in the boost phase before they would fire the interceptors.
Ace Combat 5, anyone?
The cut funding for the project this year. They're only going to make the one.
The US is the only one firing missiles these days.
The real problem with this is you would need this thing flying around all the time, to be useful. A plane couldn't take off in time or be in position to catch someone randomly launching missiles.
True, but if it forces the opposition to adopt more expensive tactics to overcome it, that counts as a win for the defense.
Also, rogue dictatorships probably aren't going to have the wherewithal to launch more than a few ballistic missiles.
hey may be... just may be, Boeing is trying to laser-etch a "love-message" on the missiles!!
Apple rejected their laser firing app. :(
AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!
You mean 'American military'; everything else has just about disappeared.
I wonder how this would hold up against a missile blitz?
Planes.
With lasers.
Now a reality.
i have a feeling they are a much older reality than they are letting on
In that case, you may be suffering from general paranoia. Seen any black helicopters lately?
Air Force acquisition programs are designed to create a successful product. Military systems undergo much more rigorous and thorough testing than almost any civilian program - thus they take longer and cost more. However, they also provide a more robust product as they are designed for military use. Every stage is evaluated by both the contractor and the military to ensure success - this is often a lengthy process.
Or not, see Bradley development program (or watch The Pentagon Wars):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2/M3_Bradley_Fighting_Vehicle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars
being on a military program I can confirm that is a load of crap
What happens when they miss? Do they knock out a few GPS satellites?
that or weather balloons that happen to be outside our atmosphere...
You guys really need to get your facts straight. Boeing is only handling the aircraft, Northrop Grumman has designed and built the laser.
all Americans should be proud and happy for this.
I can't imagine why anyone would ever have any negative thing to say about this. Except the fringe left, liberals & democrats, or haters in general.
As a liberal democrat who is ecstatic about this I would say, sir, that you are the hater.
I'm a Lib Dem as well and this is awesome. I'm sure the commenter is afraid that Obama is going to take away all his plane mounted lasers though...
Once liberal policies have thoroughly crushed the economy that pays for all this, all you'll be left with is your feeling that this was awesome.
Right, and the Republicans did nothing wrong.
You see, I got hit on the head by a coconut, and can't quite remember the last eight years...
Bush Policies FTL
This sort of thing has been in the works for a while now. They've already got laser defense systems that are being fitted on Air Force jets such as the C-17 and C-5. The difference is the current systems use a series of sensors to recognize and track the missile, and one or more laser "turrets" aim at the threat and sends a laser beam that disrupts the missiles infrared tracking ability and guides the missile away. While they don't actually destroy the missile they are quite effective in disabling a missile threat. These systems are also typically used in conjunction with flare countermeasures. They are also talking about putting these systems on commercial airliners or cargo aircraft as they are "relatively" inexpensive to install and pretty much self contained. BAE and Northrop are also testing lethal laser defense systems, but currently they are rather large and ridiculously expensive compared to non-lethal laser defense systems. It's only a matter of time though before they get small and cheap enough to be installed on just about any commercial or military plane.
What you're talking about is for disrupting surface to air, or air to air missles. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought this plane was for shooting down nukes. Surface to air missles get up to speed very quickly and since this plane is used for downing missles in the boost phase, I'm pretty sure it's different than what you're talking about.
There's a new series on the History Channel called That's Impossible that covered this last week or the week before last. It also covered microwave weapons, eBombs, a ground based laser weapon and shields under devolopment that will protect against these types of weapons. Now the ground based laser weapon is operational and the USA plan to deploy them on at least ships by by 2011-2015. The program showed the ground based laser tracked, locked on to and shoot down a live missile.
Kent, this is God. Stop playing with yourself.
Kent, have you been touching yourself?
yes. I mean NO
Hey engadget, some of us like care bear planes k? Personally I'd love to have thousands of these laser-hug planes flying around, making everyone happy. And for the record, the Care Bears rock.
While this demonstration and testing step of the Airborne Laser project could be completed at Edwards, Boeing and the MDA now need to fly the prototype 747-400F over to Seoul and wait for project partner North Korea to provide the target vehicles for the next several tests.
LOL! The sensor drone costs over 2 million dollars to build and about $25K to run for a few hours, so there was no plan to destroy it in this test (I was there). The simulated SRBM (short range ballistic missile) only costs about $750K so yeah the big boom boom will have to wait for a cheaper target... Chances are good that the project will silently slip into obscurity from this point on... If our wonder president has anything to say about it, he will kill it entirely... Just like he did with the F22R and F22B. Loser!
I doubt it will be killed. Russia doesn't like us having permanent missile defense installations in Eastern Europe so having a "portable" version able to be scrambled relatively quickly would seem like a good way to quell those worries and still provide the veil. I would also argue that the recent insistence of PRNK to test ballistic missiles in SE Asia would only encourage this program to go forward. I'd love to see one get shot down as the PRNK press is claiming success...
They already cut it. They're not going to stop development of the prototype (that would upset the members of Congress who represent the areas where the money is being spent), but they're not going to build any after the R&D is finished. It was killed at the same time as the F22 program was cut short.
OMG THEY HAVE FOUND THE Wuv Woo SKULL!!!!!
http://guides.gamepressure.com/halowars/gfx/word/79888734.jpg
Just a matter of time before these are small enough to fit on satellites which is what's really needed to provide real missle defence over an area as large as the the US or North America. Considering it only takes like 12-20 minutes for a missile from Aisa to readon North America they would need to keep the jets in the air 24/7 there would be no time to prep and take off. These would be really handy in a conflict though. If they can destroy missles they'd have no problems destroying aircraft.
Since nobody has mentioned this, i will...they need to make these small enough to mount on a frickin shark (Dr. Evil Grin)...
An what kind of power supply would that satellite have? Solar won't cut it. NASA doesn't have a workable critical nuclear reactor solution. The only way satellite based systems could work was the kind that SDI proposed originally; they contained nuclear explosives that powered (very temporarily) an x-ray pumped laser beam.
Kind of hard to get any sort of presidential approval to put that sort of hardware in space these days. What was (sort of) acceptable under Reagen in the 1980s doesn't fly today.