Military working to unleash laser weapons

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Military working to unleash laser weapons
By Mark Abramson, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Tuesday, December 29, 2009

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — The military is inching closer to using laser weapons on the battlefield after recent tests in which lasers were used to shoot down a drone aircraft and were fired from an airplane to damage a vehicle on the ground.

The Air Force recently test-fired its Advanced Tactical Laser from a C-130 Hercules, scorching a truck’s hood. And last month the Army and Air Force teamed with Boeing Co. for a demonstration in which lasers on the ground shot down drones at China Lake, Calif., company officials said.

Laser weapon projects in the works include the Navy’s powerful Free Electron Laser; the Advanced Tactical Laser; the Laser Avenger, which was used to shoot down the drones at China Lake; and the Army’s High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator, or HEL TD.

“The technology is there,” said Scott McPheeters, senior research engineer at the Army’s Program Executive Office Missiles and Space in Huntsville, Ala. “What we need to do is get the systems put into more rugged configurations (to handle different environments).”

One of the reasons the Army is interested in lasers is because lasers travel at the speed of light, which means such systems have a quick reaction time, McPheeters said.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=66915