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Congress Wants To Resurrect Laser-Wielding 747

Posted by Unknown on from the it-works-on-tee-vee dept.

Harperdog writes "Noah Schactman has a great piece on the Airborne Laser, the ray gun-equipped 747 that became a symbol of wasteful Pentagon weaponeering. Despite sixteen years and billions of dollars in development, the jet could never reliably blast a missile in trials. Now the House Armed Services Committee's Strategic Forces wants the Airborne Laser to be used to defend us against the threat of North Korea's failed missiles."

1 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Airborne laser range by M1FCJ · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hah! I went and checked the Wikipedia source. You missed the start of the sentence, "If the ABL achieves its design goals"... If they achieve its design goals, ever. Highly unlikely. The whole thing is a massive pork-barrel exercise by the US Congress. I'm glad to be living in UK. At least we waste our money on aircraft carriers which will be built and immediately sold / mothballed. For the price of this plane, we should get a couple of carriers (I can't believe US spent $5b on this stupidity).