Airborne Laser geared up for flight testing

(from the Invention Madness blog)

In the coming months, the multibillion-dollar Airborne laser will be on works to shoot a ballistic missile as it takes flight testing. This will set the future of this expensive project but one thing’s for sure, if this goes well, it will undergo another rounds of incremental improvements to the laser’s efficiency.  The ABL was developed by the US Department of Defense’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) that aims to focus a beam of laser energy in a megawatt range for several seconds. It will be loaded in a missile which will be fired at a “military significant distance” that ranges for more than 100 kilometers