Directed Energy Weapon Downs Ballistic Missile

A**masher writes "In a test off the Califoria coast late last night, Boeing's Airborne Laser successfully destroyed a sub-launched ballistic missile. 'This was the first directed energy lethal intercept demonstration against a liquid-fuel boosting ballistic missile target from an airborne platform,' reported the Missile Defense Agency. It should be noted that destroying a liquid-fueled ballistic missile is generally considered easier than killing a solid-fueled equivalent due to the relative fragility of the fueling and other systems."

Comments

Re:Already Obsolete (Go Navy!)

[ZombieWomble]

Chemical lasers are far from obsolete, and the place they're still useful is this exact type of continuous high-power application. Jefferson may have pushed a FEL to 14 kW, but the laser bolted to the plane delivers megawatts of continuous power.

I have no doubt that FELs will eventually surpass chemical lasers for this sort of application, but right now they're nowhere near ready for this sort of application. And if you think back the 15 years or so to when this project was conceived, they were even less ready. I'm sure the upgrade to FELs will come along sooner or later, but choosing them for the first-generation design would probably have delayed this project quite a considerable amount.