Airborne Laser Successfully Tracks, Hits Missile

fructose writes "The Airborne Laser managed to acquire, track, and illuminate a test missile a few days ago. According to the press release, the Boeing plane 'used its infrared sensors to find a target missile launched from San Nicolas Island, Calif ... issued engagement and target location instructions to the beam control/fire control system ... fired its two solid-state illuminator lasers to track the target and ... fired a surrogate high-energy laser at the target, simulating a missile intercept.' The sensors on board the missile confirmed the 'hit.' Michael Rinn, ABL's program director, said, 'Pointing and focusing a laser beam on a target that is rocketing skyward at thousands of miles per hour is no easy task, but the Airborne Laser is uniquely able to do the job.' The next steps will be to test the high-power laser at full strength in flight and do a complete system test later this year. Its success or failure will determine whether the project gets canceled. Looks like the Real Genius fans out there are finally living the dream."

Comments

Re:How does it aim?

[vsny]

They've proven that standard mirror materials will ablate and burn up very quickly with this laser power. Even rotating the missile does not help. The missile body still heats up significantly.

The laser optics in the airborne laser probably have to be made out of narrow band reflectors which in practice can be made more than 99.999% reflective to a laser. It would be easy to slightly change the laser wavelength and optics (a few nm's perhaps) and the missile would absorb again.

I don't trust the source of this story

[nysus]

Wouldn't Boeing have a lot of incentive to hype this to ensure that the contract got renewed for further research? It's possible that they set the bar for success so low and/or made the experiment so contrived that they couldn't help but achieve it.