{"id":191457,"date":"2009-08-15T06:33:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-15T11:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/08\/15\/boeings-airborne-laser-takes-shots\/"},"modified":"2009-08-15T06:33:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-15T11:33:00","slug":"boeings-airborne-laser-takes-shots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/08\/15\/boeings-airborne-laser-takes-shots\/","title":{"rendered":"Boeings Airborne Laser Takes Shots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img20.imageshack.us\/img20\/9315\/ablillustration7724119.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" \/>I would note, however that these were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.defensetech.org\/archives\/004979.html\">nowhere near full power<\/a>, and the program has been dropped from the 2010 budget anyway.<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>During the test, the modified Boeing 747-400F aircraft took off from Edwards Air Force Base and used its infrared sensors to find a target missile launched from San Nicholas Island, Calif. The Boeing-developed battle management system aboard ABL then issued engagement and target location instructions to the beam control\/fire control system, which acquired the target and fired its two solid-state illuminator lasers to track the target and measure atmospheric conditions. ABL then fired a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">surrogate<\/span> high-energy laser at the target, simulating a missile intercept. Instrumentation on the target verified that the surrogate high-energy laser hit the target.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n<p>I think that this program is a dead end for a number of reasons, the defense draw-down, the rise of the UAV, and the fact that there have been <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/search?q=solid+state+lasers\">significant advances in high energy solid-state lasers<\/a>, which makes the chemical technology used by the ABL an expensive, and highly toxic, relic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I would note, however that these were nowhere near full power, and the program has been dropped from the 2010 budget anyway. During the test, the modified Boeing 747-400F aircraft took off from Edwards Air Force Base and used its infrared sensors to find a target missile launched from San Nicholas Island, Calif. The Boeing-developed &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1006,1096,1025],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-military","category-missile-defense","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}