A flying Boeing 747 jumbo jet equipped with a massive laser gun shot down a Scud-like missile over the Pacific late Thursday night, marking what analysts said was a major milestone in the development of the nation’s missile defense system.

The test shoot-down at 8:44 p.m. PST over a military test range near Point Mugu is expected to renew debate over spending billions of dollars for a system that seemed so far behind schedule that the Pentagon decided to significantly curtail its budget last year. The test, which the Pentagon described as a success, could be a major boon to Southern California, where much of the high-tech system has been developed and tested.

“Proving this technology is game-changing,” said Loren Thompson, a military policy analyst for the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Arlington, Va. “The program’s funding has been hanging on by a thread. A successful shoot-down of a ballistic missile will demonstrate to Capitol Hill that the airborne laser has potential.”

The airborne laser is designed to defend against ballistic missiles by shooting them down while they are in the boost stage, or when they are lifting off.

During the experiment, a 747-400F took off from Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. The laser, which was affixed to the 747 and powered by chemicals loaded into the aircraft, shot a super-heated, basketball-size beam that traveled 670 million mph to incinerate a missile that was moving 4,000 mph, the Pentagon said.

It took just a few seconds for the beam to create a stress fracture in the missile, triggering it to split into pieces.

“The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defense, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometers, and at a low cost per intercept attempt compared to current technologies,” the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said in a statement Friday.  [Stars & Stripes]

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Airborne Laser Begins Final Proof-of-Concept Tests

The Missile Defense Agency announced today that the Airborne Laser (ABL) prototype aircraft achieved flight certification on April 21, 2009 as it returned to flight at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The successful functional check flight leads the way to completion of the final four knowledge points for the aircraft.

The current flight test campaign follows the successful completion of a year-long effort to integrate and test the Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser on board the highly modified 747-400 freighter aircraft. This phase of the
development program will demonstrate ABL’s ability to detect, track, target and engage progressively more difficult targets, culminating with a lethal demonstration against a boosting, threat-representative missile planned for later this year.

The ABL is being developed as a future element of the nation’s ballistic missile defense system and will be the first weapon system using directed energy to destroy ballistic missiles in the boost phase of flight.  [MDA]