Air-based missile shield plane ready, but awaiting weapon
SEP 03, 2007
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.021440
The Register : The Pentagon’s Airborne Laser (ABL) project has passed its penultimate technical milestone, according to makers Boeing. The ABL project is intended to deliver a fleet of aircraft armed with high-powered energy weapons. The idea is that such aircraft would patrol up to 400km from the launch sites of enemy nuclear missiles - off the coast of North Korea, say. Should the rogue state in question launch an atomic barrage, the ABLs would detect the hot exhaust plumes on infrared and focus their high-intensity energy beams on the vulnerable ballistic missiles while they were still packed with explosive rocket fuel - so blasting them to smithereens almost instantly, long before they could reach orbit.The only thing now missing from the plane: the high energy beams.....
© 2007 American Institute of Physics
