Boeing's airborne laser finally blows something up
By Donald Melanson 
posted September 3rd 2009 5:36PM
posted September 3rd 2009 5:36PM
It's been a long haul marked by funding cuts and some important but rather unexciting tests, but it looks like Boeing's much-ballyhooed airborne laser has now finally actually blown something up, real good. According to Boeing and the US Air Force, that happened over the White Sands Missile Range on August 30th, when an C-130H aircraft equipped with the Advanced Tactical Laser (or ATL) locked on to an unspecified ground target and fired the 12,000lb high-power chemical laser to make the target disappear from the face of the Earth. That successful test seems unlikely to change the laser's place in the Defense Department's arsenal, however, which has already been scaled back significantly from the earlier, more ambitious plans for a whole fleet of aircraft equipped with the weapon.
[Via Slashdot]
[Via Slashdot]
So will the bad guy planes/missiles/tanks/etc of the future be all decked out in chrome?
This things tail number is BAMF, it doesn't need actual numbers...
*waiting for a proper star wars-like laserbeam spacecraft with huge thrusters and a hyperspace button operated by a wookie*
""Lasers""
What happens if "they" cover the missiles with mirrored coating, and make it rotate along the longitudinal axis to spread the laser's heat. It might work.
Then we will just make the lasers more powerful. And they will apply an ablative coating to their missile. And then we use two lasers. And they will pack the missile full of liquid nitrogen. And we introduce a different laser wavelength with high power. And then they run out of money, and then the wall comes down.
Oh wait, that was back in 1989. I kind of lost track of who "they" were.
Actually, today's "they" probably don't have the industrial base to make all those modifications to the missiles. So the laser airplane will work just fine. So they will just put the nuke into a VW bug, and ship it into LA in a RORO car transport. While VW bugs aren't laser proof, it won't really matter.
Funny. I'm not a conspiracy buff but I find it hard to believe that this war technology is so public. I think it just may be a front. A company like Boeing would be a bit more secretive about their advanced tech and experiments wouldn't they?
Uuumm...a little more research is needed on this story. The Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) C-130 and the Airborne Laser (ABL) Boeing 747 are two different airplanes and two differently funded development projects. You have confused the two and have pieces of both in this story.
Yeah but can it bull's-eye womp rat's like I did in my T16 back home?
Directed Energy (DE) offers the first real possibility of fielding a de-escalation tool. I hesitate to call it a weapon, because if it is managed and developed correctly it will lead to an ability to immobilize ANY traditional weapon system without harming the person(s) operating the weapon. ABL is the largest and most complicated of the DE weapons, but there are many smaller and less complicated systems moving forward. Imagine the ability to weld tank tracks in place, immobilizing whole battalions. Imagine an Israel with the ability to swat Hezbollah missiles and artillery out of the sky as if they were pesky flies ( http://www.as.northropgrumman.com/products/thel/gallery.html ). Imagine the ability to immobilize whole armies, air forces, and navies with light, instructing them to leave their now useless weapons and go home to their families. DE is a technology that makes this possible. A de-escalation tool that could forever change the way warfare is no longer fought. The tools of war reduced and/or eliminated, loved ones able to come home safely. The concepts have been proven. The ability to point the beam with a high degree of accuracy (100 nanoradian resolution) has been proven. The goal now is to take the lessons learned over the past thirty years of lab work and create a safe and usable system that our men and women in uniform can use and the taxpayer can afford to purchase.
This company http://www.crystalaser.com make tiny lasers that are more fun.
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