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Air Force builds missilezapping jet
Anybody who's ever tuned into "Star Trek" knows they spew more techno-babble in an hour than you'd hear in a week-long computer programmers' convention. The terminology of Trek-double-talk includes dilithium crystals, deflector shields, warp-core drives, impulse engines, tractor beams, transporters, photon torpedoes and phasers, to name just a few.
Most realize this is nothing more than high-tech hooey dreamed up by the show's writers to dazzle viewers. None of this technology actually exists.
That is, until now.
The Air Force is turning science fiction into science fact. In November, the service engaged Boeing, Lockheed Martin and TRW - at a cost of $1.1 billion to develop and flight-test the airborne laser. The ABL, as it's nicknamed, is a souped-up jumbo jet that will zap missiles out of the sky with a high-powered ray gun. By the turn of the century, the Air Force hopes - as Captain Picard would say - to "make it so."
The Air Force aims to shoot down a theater ballistic missile with the jet by 2002, and if all goes as planned, a fleet of seven ABLs should be flying operational missions by 2008.
The contracting team will use a Boeing 747-400 airliner as the platform for the multi-megawatt laser, which will be designed to track and destroy enemy theater ballistic missiles hundreds of miles away in the early stages of flight. One type of theater ballistic missile is the SCUD - the weapon Saddam Hussein used in the Persian Gulf war to kill 28 American servicemembers and terrorize Israelis.
Secretary of the Air Force Sheila E. Widnall likened the airborne laser to the discovery of gunpowder.
"It isn't very often an innovation comes along that revolutionizes our operational concepts, tactics and strategies," Widnall said. "You can probably name them on one hand - the atomic bomb, the satellite, the jet engine, stealth, and the microchip. It's possible the airborne laser is in this league."
A crew of four, including pilot and copilot, will operate the airborne laser, which will patrol in pairs at high altitude, about 40,000 feet. The jets will fly in orbits over friendly territory, scanning the...