This looks like we are playing catch up in laser technology. But what is even more interesting is who has missiles pointing at Israel from the North? Has to be Iran, Syria or Russia.
A joint U.S.-Israeli laser designed to protect northern Israel from missile attacks downed its largest rocket to date during a test over the southern New Mexico desert.
Quietly and with the minimum of fuss, Russia deployed its most advanced tactical nuclear missiles and crews to both Syria and Iran, thereby sending an unmistakable diplomatic signal that if Israel attacked Tehran or Damascus with nuclear weapons, Russia would in return instantly and anonymously vaporize the Jewish State.
This is not an idle or exaggerated threat. The Russian missile type deployed in Syria and Iran is the P270 Moskit [Mosquito], known in NATO circles as the SS-N-22 "Sunburn", once described by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher as "the most dangerous anti-ship missile in the Russian, and now the Chinese, fleet.” #msg-1758009
The laser would be a good way to shoot down aircraft and assassinate an individual or further some strategy and still retain plausible deniability, especially so with the mobile platform. No more witnesses who might actually spot a missile headed upward and point fingers.
Considering the laser and the new difficult-to-detect quiet, diesel-electric subs we are about to fight a war in which no one can be quite sure of who did what to whom. #msg-3333316
In addition, the Commission noted that China is pursuing an advanced laser weapon for use against Taiwanese and U.S. forces.
"It has recently been reported that China has successfully developed a laser cannon with a range of more than one hundred kilometers and might have already deployed it in Fujian Province facing Taiwan." #msg-3379438
The report also underscores China's "robust" research and development program for laser weapons. In 1999, the Chinese displayed a portable laser weapon, advertised for blinding human vision and electro-optical sensors. In addition, a radio-frequency weapons program is likely in place.
"Beijing may have acquired high-energy laser equipment that could be used in the development of ground-based anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons," the DoD report says. #msg-3204653
-Am
Success for U.S.-Israel laser
CBS News
May 7, 2004
A joint U.S.-Israeli laser designed to protect northern Israel from missile attacks downed its largest rocket to date during a test over the southern New Mexico desert.
The ground-based Tactical High Energy Laser, or THEL, locked onto and destroyed the 11-foot-long, 6-inch-diameter rocket in flight over White Sands Missile Range on Tuesday, Pam Rogers, a U.S. Army spokeswoman in Huntsville, Alabama, said Friday.
The stationary test version of THEL has shot down smaller Katyusha rockets and artillery shells in the past, she said.
The system, which eventually would be mobile, uses an advanced radar to spot and track incoming rockets and then fires a deuterium fluoride chemical laser to destroy them.
Israel's director of weapons systems and infrastructure development, Shmuel Keren, said the system is able to intercept a variety of aerial targets such as long-range rockets and cruise missiles, to which there is currently no solution.
THEL, being developed by Northrop-Grumman Corp., has passed tests at White Sands since 2000, said Bob Bishop, the company's media relations manager in Redondo Beach, California.
The company could deliver a mobile prototype by 2007 or 2008 if it gets a contract this summer, he said, adding that the project appears in the U.S. defense budget for fiscal 2004 with a $56 million allocation.
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