The DOD-industry team working on the Airborne Laser recently fired low-power surrogate lasers from within the modified Boeing 747-400F ABL aircraft, proving that the team could align the various critical components of the Lockheed Martin beam control/fire control system. Boeing officials called the test a “major step” in the now-restructured program. Later this year, the ABL team plans to install the system’s track and beacon illuminator lasers for ground and flight tests. The high-energy laser, which has been ground tested, goes on the aircraft next year for the first missile shoot-down test in 2008.
Over the past few months and peaking in August, crews with the 910th Airlift Wing out of Youngstown Air Reserve Station, Ohio, have been running nighttime, low-flying missions to kill a ubiquitous and deadly adversary that’s plagued Americans for centuries—mosquitoes.
