Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Airborne Laser Successfully Tracks, Hits Missile

Posted by Soulskill on from the sweet-zombie-reagan dept.

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."

7 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. How does it aim? by scribblej · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If it uses mirrors of some type to aim the laser "beam", won't missile designers just make the missile housing out of the same reflective material?

    If it does not, how does it get pointed in the right direction fast enough?

    These articles are always so light on the interesting details.

    1. Re:How does it aim? by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If it uses mirrors of some type to aim the laser "beam", won't missile designers just make the missile housing out of the same reflective material?

      Weight and strength. Plus, it's a game of measure/countermeasure. You invent the gun, I invent armor. You invent a stronger gun, I counter with reactive armor.
      Eventually, someone will counter with a missile skin able to defeat this. And then a different type of laser/phaser/deathray will be invented.

    2. Re:How does it aim? by wfstanle · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not only mirrors (that occurred to me as well), but have the missile spin so the energy of the laser is spread out over a much larger surface. Spinning would also allow the areas of the missile to cool down somewhat.

      In all military advances in offense, the defense will find a way around it (and vice-versa). It's a cat and mouse game. Look at how Iraq tried to foil GPS guided ordinance, they jammed the GPS signals. I don't know how successful they were but given time they might have been successful.

  2. Re:Just what we need by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I recently attended a workshop in which the speaker described terrorists putting industrial lasers in a U-Haul with a telescope as a focuser and parked next to an airport. Believe it or not, this makes a usable weapon within reach with modern industrial lasers. No missile trail. Food for thought. How to defend?

  3. Re:Money for health care... by quercus.aeternam · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Wait, you're deriding the military program as being socialistic while suggesting that money should be redirected to health care reforms? Perhaps you should rethink that one a little...

  4. Re:Was REAL GENIUS wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Disclaimer: IANAP(hysicist)

    If I remember the laws of thermodynamics from my physics courses correctly, things at lower temperatures have lower amount of energy. Things are frozen by taking away the matter's energy at the molecular level. If you "pump up" some matter (i.e. give it lots of energy or make it hot) then the effect of pumping it up is negated when the matter is frozen, since you need to remove all the energy.

  5. Re:Just what we need by grolaw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It is merely a single contrarian idea. The laser tests would be visible from orbit - and frequency/energy could be sampled as simply by mere spectroscopy: the interaction between radiation and matter as a function of wavelength and easily measured. Displaced / superheated air will reveal the operating wavelength and energy density of the laser.

    If we are talking dye lasers or tunable cavity lasers - you still have massive problems dealing with the excitation as frequencies change. It might well prove to be too complex to fit aboard an aircraft.

    I built the Scientific American CO2 Laser project back in the 1960s - it was impressive and it could shatter glass at more than 100 ft. Still, the energy necessary to power an airborne device is going to have to be stored - probably in banks of capacitors.

    Realistically, an aircraft mounted rail gun might serve just as well and be far less complex to deal with (absent the effects on the aircraft of the massive magnetic impulse).