Real military laser weapon

[EngDrewman]

It's finally here! http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/44894

[SirSamII]

Very interesting, how do you measure the weight of a high-powered chemical laser?
Quote:\"each COIL burst produces enough energy in a five-second burst to power a typical American household for more than one hour.\"

[Duper]

Haven't those been around for a while? I've read about them before. They're cool, just not terribly efficient.

[EngDrewman]

Haven't those been around for a while? I've read about them before. They're cool, just not terribly efficient.

I have read read about ground based laser weaponry, but I have not read about airborne laser weapons before.

[Duper]

yeah, they've been playing with it for something like 10 years. They've been in operation for like 5. (I can't verify that.)

[Isaac]

I've been following this as well. Very interesting. On another thread someone wrote that they could be used for communication.

[Lothar]

The first time a flying laser shot down a target was May 26, 1983 - the Airborne Laser Laboratory shot down an AIM-9B Sidewinder missile. They're continually researching bigger lasers (to shoot down big missiles at long range) and better targeting systems, as they have to keep the laser beam on something for a short period of time to heat it enough to cause damage. It's neat to hear that they've got ATL working against ground targets now.

For the airplane geeks out there: at the 1:43 mark of the Iron Man trailer, there's a set of models behind Tony Stark: North American XB-70 Valkyrie, McDonnell-Douglas F-15 Eagle, Boeing YAL Airborne Laser (the 747 variant of the plane in the original article), Boeing X-45 B variant I think, and Grumman X-29. Not a bad set of models... and it tells you something about ABL that it would be included in such a group.