WASHINGTON - A Boeing Co.-led team has successfully fired for the first time a powerful laser meant to fly aboard a modified 747 as part of a U.S. ballistic missile defense shield, officials said Friday.

The test, dubbed ??First Light? by insiders, lasted only a fraction of a second but gave the project an important boost at a time it was deemed at risk of cuts or cancellation.

The Pentagon??s Missile Defense Agency described the event ?? carried out on Wednesday in a 747 fuselage on the ground at Edwards Air Force Base in California ?? as a ??landmark achievement? for the Airborne Laser system.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6473144/

U.S.-Israeli Laser Destroys Medium-Range Missile in Flight

In a test conducted yesterday, the Mobile Tactical High-Energy Laser (MTHEL), a joint American-Israeli ballistic missile defense (BMD) project, destroyed a large, high-speed ballistic missile armed with a live-warhead in what is the most complicated and realistic test yet of a laser-based missile defense system.


The Tactical High-Energy Laser (THEL) laser illuminator can engage up to 60 nearly-simultaneous threats at a range of up to five kilometers, while maintaining a near-100 percent probability of success.

Although the system, located at the U.S. Army Missile Range at White Sands, NM, has been successfully tested against short-range Katyusha rockets, yesterday??s unspecified target missile, described by lead-U.S. contractor Northrop Grumman as ??representative of threats faced by U.S. and Israeli forces,? posed a much more sophisticated challenge by presenting a target moving at more than twice the speed, three-times the altitude and significantly more mass than the MTHEL system has faced thus-far.
http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articl...,646,2517,2488

The future is here!

Have a good one!:thumbsup: