DescentBB

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

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.\"

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

Duper wrote: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.

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.)

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

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.