The Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) is a directed energy weapon (aka ray gun) developed by Boeing under a US military contract. According to an overview document (PDF) about Boeing's Directed Energy Systems program, "In August 2009, the ATL defeated a ground vehicle target from the air, demonstrating its first air-to-ground, high-power laser engagement of a tactically representative target." The video above documents that experiment, in which the laser weapon, mounted on a C-130H Hercules transport plane, was fired at a car. See the Boeing site for more videos, including aerial footage. (via Smithsonian Air & Space)
Video of laser weapon fired from airplane
The Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) is a directed energy weapon (aka ray gun) developed by Boeing under a US military contract. According to an overview document (PDF) about Boeing's Directed Energy Systems program, "In August 2009, the ATL defeated a ground vehicle target from the air, demonstrating its first air-to-ground, high-power laser engagement of a tactically representative target." The video above documents that experiment, in which the laser weapon, mounted on a C-130H Hercules transport plane, was fired at a car. See the Boeing site for more videos, including aerial footage. (via Smithsonian Air & Space)
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♪ Everybody wants to rule the world. ♫
Where's my giant Jiffy Pop?
"Defeated a ground target"? More like "caused a small, inconvenient fire to momentarily flare up on the hood."
Shades of "Real Genius" with Val Kilmer. If the car had been filled with unpopped popcorn kernels it would have been way cooler.
And against spinning mirrored surfaces?
Totally. Where's the popcorn!?
Like any (current) directed energy system, it still needs line of sight and a long time on target... plus, it doesn't make a cool "pew pew pew" sound like it should.
While this is awesome and frightening, it falls short on the fireworks I was hoping for from 21st Century beam weapons.
Let's give it more of a PEW ... BOOM thing. And make it green. Everyone knows laser cannons are supposed to be green.
[makes own "pew, pew!" sound]
That looks about powerful enough to give me a sun tan. Hold on pilot let me switch sides!
Finally a way for pilots to fire back at those pesky laser pointers.
Just in time for the upcoming War on Black Squares.
(if you like me, lase a hole in the box from an airplane.)
So much money spent and no wow factor. Sad.
I got to see the building where they work on this when I toured Edward's AFB recently. They have the nose of a 747 sticking out of the side of a building and warning lights and signs all over because it's a chemically pumped laser and the chemicals are nasty and toxic. If I recall from reading about this, it's a one shot per flight or at least very limited.
Beam weapons are a neat idea, but it seems like alot of work and equipment to do the same job as a small missile.
Villains everywhere will surrender to avoid having their paint scorched. Everyone knows the guys driving a pickup truck with a machine gun mounted on the back will go to great lengths to avoid scratching the paint.
So, what, they mounted a big magnifying glass on an airplane?
The version in the movie "Real Genius" was far cooler.
I feel more secure now!
Except this and a lot of stuff got funding cut under Obama. It's cool, but future implementation and further testing looks bleak, at least until the Senate race in '10.
I remember almost a decade ago, they were shooting down armed Katyusha rockets in mid-flight out at White Sands Missile Range.
So- yeah, hey, sure- cool and stuff, but our bridges are falling down, our schools are falling apart, and everyone's unemployed. But we have lasers on planes!
@#3, excellent Real Genius reference. I love that movie.
@#15, next up: sharks with frickin' lasers!
Did it even make it through the hood?
Needed Jiffy Pop - lots of Jiffy Pop...
Don't think of it as an Advanced Tactical Laser. Think of it more as outsourcing your deep-frying needs. All those tax dollars are really just being spent on fine instant-delivery cuisine.
@15/BillGlover,
Yeah, you can see a missle coming. Lasers are invisible! (And cooler!)
;)
I'm with Osprey. If the funding on this thing got cut I'm not going to weep over the bridge that gets fixed in its stead.
"Every gun that's made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed." Dwight Eisenhower
$100 to the first person brave enough to light a cigarette off it.
Needs more shoop.
Real Genius, one of my favorite movies BTW, approached the problem as if creating a laser powerful enough was the problem. In reality, the bigger problem is stable tracking and deployment and it seems like they have gotten a good handle on that, at least from cruising height of a c-130.
I guess Kent was right, his Phased Congegate Tracking System really was the cooler piece. Might not be able to vaporize a human target from space yet, but that was pretty cool.
Wouldn't some sort of retro-reflective coating make short work of whoever is firing this thing?
This is designed to clip antennas, pop tires, set off magazines, etc.
The ABL at Edwards is a different beast.
You get more than one shot per flight - regenerative EC-COIL.
You can not defend against this by spinning or mirroring something.
"...a for only $5 billion in development contracts you too will be able to:
- De-squirrel trees from 10,000 meters!
- Improve property values with new Nazca Lines!
- Hunt whales without leaving the comfort of a pressurized cabin!
- ...and much, much more!
Why buy one when you can get two for twice the price! Act now!"
The rest of the world welcomes our new overlords.
Heil USA.
Forget the hood, I want to see them set a mannequin in the driver's seat and set its face on fire. You KNOW that's what it is intended for.
Also I love the quiet, relaxing music in the first video. Nothing says "ship of war" like a bit of woodwinds...
Wow, nasty giant plane... Now we have to repaint the hood of the car! These will become duelling scars that people will wear with pride!
I came here to make sure the obligatory Real Genius references got made. I'm gratified to see that even the very first comment was on the ball.
#14 BillGlover, others, etc:
This is not the same type of laser as used in the 747 anti ballistic laser. It is *NOT* a chemical laser that is stuck to one specific frequency of ouput and thus unable to change for different aerosols, water vapor, and reflectivesurfaces.
It is a *free electron laser* which is something entirely more badass. By sending a relativistic beam of electrons down a cavity of alternating magnetic field polarities you can generate a range of frequencies from the xray to longwave IR. It uses electrical power.
So, yeah, it's green.
Yes, it just scratched the paint, but if you hold the trigger for 5 seconds, it releases a mega-burst that will blow the target away.
/Spartan Laser reference.
Hi, I posted earlier. I'm a pal of Xeni's.
It is not a free electron laser (FEL), it is the EC-COIL. It is regenerative so there is minimal exhaust. The ABL is just COIL and there is a huge exhaust.
--I want to see them set a mannequin in the driver's seat and set its face on fire. You KNOW that's what it is intended for.
It is to clip antennas, pop tires, and detonate magazines.
A: too expensive for shooting at people.
B: water has too high of a heat capacity.
If you stick a giant rotating mirror on your missle/plane/etc, you've just killed whatever stealth systems you have and are now more vulnerable to conventional weapons.
Directed energy weapons will eventually become powerful enough to radically change what war looks like. Just not right now.
re:'It is to clip antennas, pop tires, and detonate magazines.'
Since when are magazines something to be destroyed? With the economy the way it is, newspapers going downhill, hardly any true reporting gets put out in print nowadays... and have you seen a current issue of TIME lately? Why, they barely weigh an ounce and a half.. if that! I say leave the magazines be!!!
I am not saying I really want to fund this stuff, but it actually could have uses in an upgraded capacity. If from a freaking airplane they could hit a little square like that, this sort of weapon has uses. That looks accurate enough to be able to basically shoot (melt) the gun out of someone's hand. It sure would be nice if you had the optics and the weapon that would let you identify an individual human from the air, and pop a hole between his eyes while leaving everyone else standing. Even better if you could select certain people in a group and pop all of the ones you want at once and leave the ones you don't to harm.
Right now, when the US sees random Al-Qaeda member, they drop the smallest bomb they can manage to get the job done without leveling the entire town. Unfortunately, the smallest bomb to 'get the job done' tends blow up entire houses or four. Imagine if instead you had the capacity to whack a single person as they got out of a car. Even better, imagine if you had the capacity to see someone go into a building, zip a drone over that loudly declares anyone leaving the building dies, and then pop a hole in anyone who leaves. If they are not suicidal, they will stay. If a kid runs out, you can let them room. You can just keep them in there until soldiers can arrive and take them alive.
Like I said, I am not advocating this, but I certainly see the uses. The US doesn't need another weapon level a few city blocks. If the US wants a building, car, or anything else destroyed, it is going to blow up. Far more useful to the US at this point would be very low power weapons highly discriminating weapons, like a freaking laser beam that can burn a hole through your trunk. If you want everyone in the car dead, just use a missile.
heres the COIL laser patent. neato
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6922429.html
Now if it could only deliver a thermite grenade to finish burning through the hood and engine block, then we might have something. It's actually more useful as anti-personnel, fry the guy and leave the hardware intact.
It sure would be nice if you had the optics and the weapon that would let you identify an individual human from the air, and pop a hole between his eyes while leaving everyone else standing.
nice...you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means...
Would post a more interresting comment if the video would work :(
The 80 billion dollar project to carve our initials on the nuke that destroys all humanity.
This is going to be, uh, nice when they can put it on a Predator instead of needing a Hercules to haul it around. Spot a terrorist, zap a terrorist.
corner cube
SecDef Gates is not a fan of the ABL- this particular program may never leave the realm of research.
But there are other death-laser programs. Just not so big.
How is this useful in the twenty-first century again?
Let's see,guerilla warfare, indistinguishable combatants, etc. etc.
We have better uses for the money. Even if you think the military's budget is too small.
re: Rindan "It sure would be nice if you had the optics and the weapon that would let you identify an individual human from the air"
Without going into choice of words, the Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance — Imaging System (ARGUS–IS) project might interest you...
Basically, it's an unmanned aircraft with a 15 frame per second 1.8 GIGApixel video camera transmitting a feed.
Over a 1 square mile area, that's 1.5 inch by 1.5 inch pixels. At 27 gigapixels per second, even with compression that'll be quite the bandwidth hog (can they keep it from being jammed?)
http://defensesystems.com/Articles/2009/09/02/C4ISR-3-Gorgon-Stare.aspx
That said, my father worked in the industrial side of the military-industrial complex. I always thought it was amazing/sad what things we could dream up to kill people.
And in spite of the claims of programs like this that are intended to give the military "surgical precision"-- for one thing, it never really quite seems to work out that way.
For another, war is SUPPOSED TO BE HORRIBLE. Every time we come up with some scheme where we think we can kill the bad guys in between the innocent civilians, we just make war more thinkable, a more palatable option to be used before things like diplomacy, negotiations, and understanding why someone might be against us in the first place.
If only the ARGUS-IS project could be used to develop better consumer hi-def cameras instead of deciding more precisely whom we want to kill.
For another, war is SUPPOSED TO BE HORRIBLE. Every time we come up with some scheme where we think we can kill the bad guys in between the innocent civilians, we just make war more thinkable, a more palatable option to be used before things like diplomacy, negotiations, and understanding why someone might be against us in the first place.
But...by this logic, shouldn't the UN pass a resolution that all wars must be fought with thermonuclear and bio-weapons?
As appalling as war inevitably is, and as much as I hope we can avoid them, I have a hard time with any arguments against methods of reducing "collateral damage". Any realistic read of humanity indicates that wars aren't going to end any time soon.
It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it. R.E. Lee
"But...by this logic, shouldn't the UN pass a resolution that all wars must be fought with thermonuclear and bio-weapons?"
No, that doesn't follow. I'm not promoting collateral damage. There's certainly no need to go to such an extreme to make war even more horrible. Though there are many who claim that the Cold War policy of Mutually Assured Destruction prevented World War Three from happening for several decades.
"It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it." R.E. Lee
Exactly.
These things look all pretty, but do seem rather contrite in the terms of killing people and stopping the "bad guy".
War has evolved or devolved into guerilla warfare. To some degree you can protect against it, but realistically it very hard to fight it. You have combatants and innocents living in the same place, hell even being friends possible.
War is much much easier on a larger scale. Country A invades country B, they fight. If a whole country goes to war then it's pretty easy to bring out the big guns and cause massive damage. Frankly that's the way the US military is setup.
And that's the way I think it should be. To me a country might have civil unrest, or an oppressive regime, but that's the citizens issue to deal with. No one came to bail out the colonies 200+ years ago. We had our war, we fought for our independence. When that breaking point is reached a society will react. It will be violent, people will die, and they will die for what they believe is something better. Only at that point can the people take control of their future. Having someone else do it for you keeps the people from getting to that turning point. Without that they will never invest the hard work to "fix" their society.
The "cold war" era was interesting because people had the fear of massive retaliation. Screw with the wrong country and it wasn't going to be talks and precision strikes, it was going to be a shit storm. Sometimes carrying a big stick is more impressive than using it.
Todays wars (Iraq, Afghanistan) will not be ended by super cool technology. Yes, as a geek and Real Genius fan it pains me to say that. But a stack of super prototype weapons will do far less for ending these wars than good intelligence. As long as we have stupid, backwards policies like Don't Ask, Don't Tell we'll still be shooting ourselves in the foot (so to speak). You can't tell the insurgent from the freedom-fighter from the terrorist without inside knowledge, I don't care how many giga-pixels your unmanned drone is capable of. Think about it. The government kicked out 26 Arab and Farsi translators because they are gay. How stupid is that? I mean really???? Does anyone think that military members being "out" is going to destroy our military? Really? I'd be happy to see funding for this get cut. Let the private sector figure it out. Fund more linguists and spies (gay or straight) and get some inside info to PREVENT a terrorist attack. The only weapon terrorists really have is surprise. OK, now I'm just ranting, I'll stop.
BTW, I used to work next to a metal recycling yard that had a CO2 laser hanging on the wall. Don't know where they got it, but I coveted it every time I saw it. I heart lasers.
Parked vehicles don't have a chance.
People. do you know what this means?
Lighting barbecues from high altitude. Think of the possibilities...
@BCSIZEMO
The Revolutionary War, the myth that we stood alone against the British. Umm, check into French support... Lafayette... Use of the French Navy to block sea support for Cornwallis... It's why the whole "Freedom Fries" is so ludicrous.
Definitely worth the money...health care wasn't, but lasers that don't do too much to targets that can be destroyed/disabled with cheaper, conventional weapons are.
A corner cube would not work either. Without adaptive optics calculating for atmospeheric aberrations between the cube and the aircraft the beam would be reduced to a "flashlight" on the return trip. It's going to instantly burn through any optic on the target anyway.
ABL is also scheduled for a in flight missile shoot down this year.
The tests here do not look as impressive as they really are. If you have not worked on the ABL or ATL is is hard to imagine how diffulcult this is. I believe the ABL is in fact the most complicated machine that has ever been built.
Mutually Assured Destruction prevented World War Three from happening for several decades.
MAD....possibly the most accurate and evocative acronym of all time.
I can't help but think of polished shields....
That laser looks weak judging by the effects (The laser cutters some makers on BB use could probably do more damage.), and focuses on too small a spot to be fired from an airplane far away. (lasers are not immune to diffraction)
Are we sure this isn't a video of a small test version being fired from the tripod in the background? Or a bunch of match heads set alight on the hood?
So.............. we can help the enemy light a fire.....?
For popcorn effect, replace black square with a guy's head... although it wouldnt be PC to show that.
So, is this an example of Boeing Boeing?
Sorry.
They totally got outside the lines.
@26 Cinemajay True, lasers are much cooler.
@38 Thanks for the correction. I didn't realize it was a different laser.
I missed an opportunity earlier to say, if you ever get a chance to tour Edwards do it. It's an amazing place. So many historic firsts.
Needs more shark.