Altitude
Newsflash: Both ICBMs and 747s can and do fly above the clouds. ;)
US raygun jumbo fluffs another test missile-blast attempt
The United States' enormous jumbo-jet-mounted raygun, the Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB), has suffered another embarrassing test failure. During an attempt to beam down a target missile off the Californian coast last week, a technical hitch saw the 747's blaster cannon fail to fire up. Warfare of the future as foreseen by the …
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Tuesday 26th October 2010 09:58 GMT Bruce Hoult
it's a developmental test
I don't understand most of the comments here, or the snark in the original article.
If they were 100% sure everything was going to work perfectly then they wouldn't have called it a "test", would they?
It appears it wasn't the big laser that failed. They didn't get around to turning it on because the targeting didn't lock on. That seems like a good thing to me -- wouldn't want to go spraying that thing around at random.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
