Last month, Boeing’s Airborne Laser (ABL) aircraft — a Boeing 747 reconfigured as a missile-shooter — engaged a target missile launched from San Nicolas Island, off the central California coast.
This was not a test of the aircraft’s high-energy laser, but it paves the way for the attempted shootdown of a missile later this year. In this video, you can see the missile plume moving from left to right across the cockpit windshield. A tracking laser locks on the target, followed by an atmospheric compensation laser. Then the surrogate high-energy laser — a stand-in for the ABL’s powerful chemical laser — shines on the target.
The target missile is a 36-foot-long Terrier Lynx/Black Brandt missile, a.k.a. a Missile Alternative Range Target Instrument .
