LASER 747: COOL YOUR JETS

For those of you fired up about the idea of a laser-​​blasting 747, a word of advice: relax.
Sure, the Airborne Laser, or ABL, man­aged late last year to achieve “first light” turn on its ray gun. But it’s going to be a long time before that laser is loaded onto the plane, and the thing starts fly­ing.
ABL, long crit­i­cized for bust­ing bud­gets and crack­ing dead­lines, was sup­posed to start zap­ping mis­siles in 2002. Then it was pushed back to 2005.
This week, at a Washington con­fer­ence on laser weapons, the Missile Defense Agency’s Lt. Gus Valez wouldn’t even haz­ard a guess as to when those tests might begin.
In the com­ing year, Lt. Valez said, the Agency would fly the plane, with its beam con­trol and fire con­trol equip­ment loaded aboard, but turned off to see if the stuff could han­dle the stress. Then would come test flights with the gear switched on. During this time, on the ground, the laser weapon would con­tinue to have the bugs shaken out of it. Only after all these tasks were com­pleted, Lt. Valez noted, would the ardu­ous process of inte­grat­ing the laser into the 747 begin.
As Lt. Valez spoke, a PowerPoint slide over his right shoul­der gave a time­line, with a first ABL in-​​air blast com­ing some­time between 2006 and 2009. But when asked to con­firm that sched­ule, he demurred.
“We’re not pre­dict­ing a date right now,” Lt. Valez answered.

January 20th, 2005 | Lasers and Ray Guns | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.