Free Republic

The Pentagon’s Airborne Laser (ABL) is being prepared for a late July test in which it will attempt to shoot down an ascending target missile from twice the distance of the aircraft’s previous intercept tests, the program’s top official said. Originally conceived as an operational military system that would use a high-power chemical laser to destroy ballistic missiles in the early stages of flight, the ABL platform — only one has been built — has been relegated to the role of technology test-bed. The program is funded by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) through September, but its future is...

The Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB) faces an uncertain future as both a research project and an operational system even after its 1MW-class chemical laser successfully - and historically - destroyed a ballistic missile off the California coast on 11 February. The long-awaited intercept test proved that the modified Boeing 747-400F's key technology - a chemical oxygen iodine laser (Coil) invented by US Air Force researchers in 1977 - is a lethal weapon against ballistic missiles. A week before the ballistic intercept, the ALTB shot down a Terrier Black Brant, a two-stage sounding rocket that presents faster and smaller target to...