redalrt4 (November 13, 2008 at 12:29 am)

"That's stupid! It would imply to keep 747's flying over ennemy territory constantly!" No, the laser has a 200 mi range

kashsoldier (November 1, 2008 at 3:25 pm)

Do you think that the countries like Russia still depends on these ballistic missiles? Russia has already moved on to supersonic and Hypersonic missiles with Ramjet and Scramjet engines. Missiles above mach 10 speed cannot be intercepted which travel below the atmosphere. Countries are also heading towards weaponisation of the space to target satellites which are the life line of the US. GPS satellites are the first ones to go down.

9K58 (October 18, 2008 at 8:18 pm)

WOW, US made something soviets had in 1970's. Good job catching up. Soviets had A-60 Berieve in 1972. I wonder, when will americans launch something like Polus/Skif space battle station with laser weapons that soviets launched in 1980's? Maybe in 20 more years? When will something similar to Terra-3 be built? 30 more years? Oh you thought US had tech superiority? Sorry to disappoint you. All this might be built of course given US will not go down cause of economy crisis, which it might do.

NickoMcbrainRules (October 8, 2008 at 3:05 am)

USAF has gone Amarrr

Jamesmessig (September 29, 2008 at 3:47 am)

Hi Folks; I think you can trust that the 747 ABL will become operational relatively soon. These engineer and physics geeks have I am sure thought of the possible counter measures and with top military strategic brass, have gone over a wide range of scenarios about how and when it would be fired. As for the ABL's use as an antipersonel weapon, such can probably done at a range of atleast 40 miles for future systems that might have an antipersonel aspect. EM energy weapons are here to stay.

Doublehp (September 24, 2008 at 6:58 pm)

And, after powder and nuclear, i think it's a very good idea to come to the next generation of defense. + you will notice that this is a defense only weapon, as it can hardly be used as massive attack ammo. I think it's good a good sign any army start to focus on defense.

Doublehp (September 24, 2008 at 6:57 pm)

shrunkensimon according to the USA-Russia distance, and the max speed of a missile, i think that even a single YAL-1A should be enough for the job. Anyway, the aim of this weapon is not to be efficient and reliable next year; it's a long term program experiment.

shrunkensimon (August 30, 2008 at 2:17 pm)

"The defence.. of freedom".. what utter shite! I'd like to see 7 of these aircraft defend against a launch of 100's of warheads at the same time from Russian soil.. that would be the ultimate FAIL

orientninjai (August 24, 2008 at 5:33 pm)

can have one )_)

altoid100568 (August 19, 2008 at 4:40 pm)

multiple kills handled at the speed of light...shoot it down?...i don't think so...at least not as trivial as you think.