says (pdf)<\/a> the flying energy-weapon platform will fly into Andrews airforce base outside DC from its normal home at Edwards AFB in California. The 747 is expected to make a night landing, before being shown off to politicos, officials, and the media. It will return to the west coast on 21 June.<\/p>\nThe Airborne Laser is a modified Boeing 747-400 freighter aircraft intended to use a Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) to destroy a hostile ballistic missile during the highly-vulnerable “boost phase” of its trajectory \u2014 the first few minutes after it is launched.<\/p>\n
Missiles in boost are full of pressurized explosive fuel, so even a relatively feeble zapping could cause them to explode. Also, attacking a multiple-warhead ICBM at this point will take out all its re-entry vehicles in one shot.<\/p>\n
…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Actually, the missiles are not full of “pressurized explosive fuel”. The last US missile to do this was the Atlas, retired in the 1960s, which used LOX.<\/p>\n
Modern missiles use storable liquid propellants, and the most modern, solid fuel, which do not present the same structural vulnerablitiex.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m dubious of the technology. Pentagon’s raygun-packing 747 to visit DCBy Lewis PagePublished Wednesday 20th June 2007 13:14 GMT The Airborne Laser, the US Missile Defence programme’s raygun-equipped jumbo jet, is to visit Washington tonight in an attempt to drum up support on Capitol Hill. Airborne Laser aircraft The Airborne Laser aircraft, intended to explode …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1008,1006,1096],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-defense-procurement","category-military","category-missile-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199872"}],"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=199872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"http:\/\/regmedia.co.uk\/2007\/06\/20\/airborne_laser_aircraft.jpg\")
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