The ABL is designed to detect and destroy theatre ballistic missiles in the powered boost phase of flight immediately after missile launch. The aircraft loiters at an altitude of 40,000 feet. Missile launch is detected by a reconnaissance system such as satellite or Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft and threat data is transmitted to the ABL aircraft by Link 16 communications. A suite of infrared, wide-field telescopes installed along the length of the aircraft\u2019s fuselage detects the missile plume at ranges up to several hundred km.<\/p>\n
The pointing and tracking system tracks the missile and provides launch and predicted impact locations. The turret at the nose of the aircraft swivels towards the target and a 1.5 metre telescope mirror system inside the nose focuses the laser beam onto the missile. The laser beam is locked onto the missile, which is destroyed near its launch area within seconds of lock-on. Where the missile carries liquid fuel, the laser can heat a spot on the missile\u2019s fuel tank, causing an increase in internal pressure resulting in catastrophic failure. Alternatively, the missile is heated in an arc around its circumference and crumples under atmospheric drag force or its own G-force.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u201cNah, couldn\u2019t be \u2013 could it?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It sure could be Jack!! I was never a true believer that the Star Wars SDI program was something that would work, but I also know laser technology fairly well. I also know that computers these days can accomplish amazing things, and the capability to use DSPs and high speed sampling is quite possible. In fact, capabilities of processors and DSPs are often measured in MIPS (millions of instructions per second) and sampling in the 100’s of millions of samples per second can easily keep a focus on a moving object at high speed. Lasers travelling at the speed of light can zip (or zap as the case may be) 300km in 1 millisecond. i.e 1\/1000th of a second.<\/p>\n
If I were Pyongyang, I would be quite concerned about that failure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reprinted from Jack’s Newswatch I was thinking about the huge missile that Korea launched all day today as I followed the news\u2026 Bravo to the Bush administration for its measured response to North Korea\u2019s Fourth of July fireworks display. The North\u2019s missile tests, their date chosen to coincide with America\u2019s Independence Day, were, as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,53,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-encyclopedia-screwedica","category-politics-international","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}