AIRBORNE LASER ALMOST READY

Lasers are THE weapon of the near future. The THEL system (ground based) has already taken down mortar rounds, artillery rounds and scuds in tests.

The airborne laser program could already be operational if a certain womanizing Clinton (I mean Bill) hadn’t pulled the rug out from under the program during in his first term.

Imagine an airborne/space based laser system linked to a system to triangulate a cell phone call: Ring, ring. Hello, Osama here. Zap. And none of that pesky collateral damage.

So we need land based, sea based, air borne and space based systems ASAP. Space based systems may be the most critically needed to deal with those Chinese anti-satellite satellites and anti-ship kinetic kill satellites.

FROM NEWS.COM.AU:
A MODIFIED Boeing 747 designed to be part of an emerging US antimissile shield has successfully completed an important flight test, the Pentagon's Missile Defence Agency and Boeing said today.
To simulate an intercept, the prototype Airborne Laser actively tracked an airborne target, compensated for atmospheric turbulence and fired a "surrogate" for a missile-zapping high-energy laser, they said.
"We have now demonstrated most of the steps needed for the Airborne Laser to engage a threat missile and deliver precise and lethal effects against it," said Pat Shanahan, a vice president at Boeing, the prime contractor.

Speed of light
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel John Daniels, the Pentagon's program manager, said the test on Saturday marked an historic day for "directed-energy" weapons firing at the speed of light, or 186,000 miles per second.
"This will fundamentally change the way we engage and destroy fleeting targets," he said.
The airborne laser is to be the first warplane relying entirely on a directed energy device as a weapon. It is designed to destroy an enemy ballistic missile shortly after it is launched, in the "boost phase" of its flight path.
The program will have cost about $US5 billion ($5.75 billion) from its inception in the early 1990s through a scheduled test intercept test of a mock enemy missile in August 2009, Lt-Col Daniels said.
The modified Boeing 747-400F took off from Edwards Air Force Base, California. It used its infrared sensors and a tracking laser to zero in on a "target board" on an Air Force aircraft, Boeing said.