Remember that laser missile intercepting plane?

S

Shadow(of)Death

Veteran X
It looks like they will be doing some real world testing soon.


April 24, 2009
Airborne Laser Begins Final Proof-of-Concept Tests
The Missile Defense Agency announced today that the Airborne Laser (ABL) prototype aircraft achieved
flight certification on April 21, 2009 as it returned to flight at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The successful
functional check flight leads the way to completion of the final four knowledge points for the aircraft.
The current flight test campaign follows the successful completion of a year-long effort to integrate and test
the Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser on board the highly modified 747-400 freighter aircraft. This phase of the
development program will demonstrate ABL’s ability to detect, track, target and engage progressively more
difficult targets, culminating with a lethal demonstration against a boosting, threat-representative missile
planned for later this year.
The ABL is being developed as a future element of the nation’s ballistic missile defense system and will be
the first weapon system using directed energy to destroy ballistic missiles in the boost phase of flight.
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http://www.mda.mil/mdalink/pdf/09news0009.pdf
 
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OFN and cut from budget

Ban for OFN and delete his account for posting something that has already been cut from the federal budget commitee
 
It pisses me off to no end when I hear of clearly awesome technologies being cut from the budget after the money has been spent to get them this close to production.
 
awesome but useless... id rather the money be spent making warp drive or something instead. ill be damned if i dont shake hands with a pointy eared alien before i die!
 
HaPpY said:
awesome but useless... id rather the money be spent making warp drive or something instead. ill be damned if i dont shake hands with a pointy eared alien before i die!
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You'll have to wait for France to get its ITER fusion reactor on-line. The really cool stuff will happen when we have unlimited power. :roller:
 
Shadow(of)Death said:
It pisses me off to no end when I hear of clearly awesome technologies being cut from the budget after the money has been spent to get them this close to production.
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it's not really money wasted, since they weren't about to produce these planes because the one-off cost is enough just to field one of them. This same technology is being used in all kinds of other places already.

But if you get nuked by Iran don't blame me.
 
HaPpY said:
awesome but useless... id rather the money be spent making warp drive or something instead. ill be damned if i dont shake hands with a pointy eared alien before i die!
Click to expand...

I agree. Eliminating North Korea's threat of ICBMing the west coast is a complete waste of taxpayer money.
 
I think they cut the planned future models..... thing is amazing though. Three lazers working together. They have to account for satellites in the path of the laser, in case they miss. Very impressive.
 
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