Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Factory Testing of Airborne Laser Cannon Completed

Posted by michael on from the who's-got-the-popcorn? dept.

Acid-F1ux writes "Lockheed Martin has completed factory testing of the optical benches for the Airborne Laser's Beam Control/Fire Control (BC/FC) system. The Airborne Laser (ABL) is the first megawatt-class laser weapon system to be carried on a specially configured 747-400F aircraft, designed to autonomously detect, track and destroy hostile ballistic missiles."

1 of 568 comments (clear)

  1. Re:747-400F by ivrcti · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ---"The military is just continuing a long tradition of planning to fight the last war, in this case the Cold War."-----

    Uhmm... NO. In this case, they are working towards the next war, the rogue nation with a highly limited number of fairly crude ballistic missiles. Our experience during the cold war proved that while the consequences of major nuclear war are very high, the probability is rather low. The exact opposite is true of the rogue nation/terrorist group scenario.