Ray-Gun Reality: Inside Two 'Star Wars' Projects

Posted on: May. 16th, 2006 || Source: livescience.com | E-mail Article | Print Article

Ray-Gun Reality: Inside Two 'Star Wars' Projects

For a vision of war, it was almost elegant. The smoke and stink and deafening crack of munitions would be replaced by invisible beams of focused light. Modified 747 jets, equipped with laser weapons, would blast ballistic missiles while they were still hundreds of miles from striking our soil.
"Directed-energy" cannons would intercept incoming rockets at the speed of light, heating up the explosives inside and causing them to burst apart in midair.

And this wasn't some relic of Reagan-era Star Wars visionaries. These were modern plans, initiated barely a decade ago, that would be realized not in some far-off future, but soon. Out in the New Mexico desert at the White Sands Missile Range, the U.S. Army's Tactical High Energy Laser shot down dozens of Katyusha rockets and mortars. In 2004, Air Force contractors began test-firing the chemically powered beam weapon for a retrofitted 747, the Airborne Laser.

Then reality set in, and these recent efforts to wield battlefield lasers suddenly began looking as doomed as Star Wars.

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