{"id":16632,"date":"2012-03-08T00:30:30","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T03:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=16632"},"modified":"2012-03-07T23:12:32","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T02:12:32","slug":"airborne-laser-flies-into-sunset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/08\/airborne-laser-flies-into-sunset\/","title":{"rendered":"Airborne Laser Flies into Sunset"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Airborne Laser Test Bed, officially the YAL-1A, was part of a 15-year, multi-billion dollar research program<\/a> that ultimately shot down a surface-launched missile<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It has now been retired<\/a> to the Air Force’s Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group near Tucson, Arizona — more commonly known as “the boneyard:”\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The ALTB, which was a part of the Birk Flight Test Facility at Edwards for more than nine years, was a modified Boeing 747-400 Freighter that housed two solid-state lasers and a megawatt-class Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser that could use directed energy as a viable technology against ballistic missiles…<\/p>\n

“The professional ALTB team built and tested the world’s first airborne megawatt class laser and demonstrated the ability to acquire and track a boosting missile, actively compensate the high energy laser for atmospheric distortions, and place a stabilized laser spot on a boosting missile over hundreds of kilometers,” [Director LtCol Jeff] Warmka said. “In February 2010 we reached the ‘mountain top’ by successfully shooting down a threat-representative ballistic missile – proving the viability of directed energy for missile defense.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The aircraft and program were mothballed due to budget cuts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Airborne Laser Test Bed, officially the YAL-1A, was part of a 15-year, multi-billion dollar research program that ultimately shot down a surface-launched missile. It has now been retired to the Air Force’s Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group near Tucson, Arizona — more commonly known as “the boneyard:”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[3010,1411,3009,13,3011,857,3012,210,2,3008],"class_list":["post-16632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-3010","tag-abl","tag-airborne-laser","tag-aircraft","tag-altb","tag-boneyard","tag-jeff-warmka","tag-laser","tag-military","tag-yal-1a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}