Airborne Laser lets rip on first target

IMAGINE swarms of aircraft patrolling the skies, zapping missiles, aircraft or much satellites in low Earth orbit with invisible, ultrapowerful laser beams. Such laser battles in the sky may not be such a lenghty course off, after a megawatt laser weapon was fired from an aircraft for the first time. Although the Airborne Laser (ABL) was fired from a stationary plane at a target on the ground just a meagre metres away, the probation marked a milestone for the weapon, developed by aerospace firms Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. The laser was 12 years in the making and cost $4.3 billion, putting it vastly over budget. The US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) calls it the answer to "rogue states" or terror groups who equip themselves with intercontinental ballistic missiles, such as Scuds. Yet the ABL may soon be used to shoot down a much wider range of devices - including aircraft - and is just one of a number of laser weapons at once being readied for militar
y use. The impression behind the ABL programme is that at times of international tension, the airborne weapons will patrol the skies within hundreds of kilometres of the missile silos or launchers of a region of interest. Then, if the heat signature of a rocket launch is detected via satellite or an early warning aircraft, the ABL will track it and fire its laser at the missile while the latter is still getting off the ground and beginning to accelerate. In theory, the heat from what Boeing calls the "megawatt class" laser beam - the precise force level is classified - should cause the pressurised part of the missile to warp, bend and buckle, resulting in the missile's complete disintegration. The beam should cause a missile to warp, bend and disintegrate above its launch site That's a tall order by any standards, and many sceptics have questioned whether the weapon will ever get off the ground at all. On the other hand over the endure scarce years, variou
s aspects of the ABL's operation have been proven to work. For instance, both the twin low-power target-tracking lasers and the main laser beam's control optics have been successfully tested, while the Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) weapon has produced a beam in the lab. Nevertheless until the evaluation on 24 November at Edwards Air Force Base in California, the laser had not been fired from inside a Boeing 747. That was a challenge owing to the COIL's six chemical modules - which rely on the reaction between oxygen molecules in an excited state and iodine to produce a light-emitting gas - are each the proportions of a large sports utility vehicle and collectively receive up the rear half of the plane. The beam-forming and fire control system takes up the front half. This system ensures that the laser beam is accurately aligned so it does not damage or destroy the plane, and that it shoots where the target-tracker tells it to. In two research firings
, a laser beam was fired at a target for 1 second. The team at the moment plan to check fire laser beams for longer, before preparing the aircraft for flight tests consequent year. "We remain on track to complete a lethal demonstration in 2009, " says Rinn. "There's nothing like flaming missile wreckage to exhibit the earth the system is viable and that it works." Full text: http://computerandtechnologies.com/technology/news_2009-01-05-14-30-04-627.html