Airborne laser project scrapped and parked

[The Inspector]

The Pentagon has mothballed the airborne laser project after 15 years and $5 Billion dollars saying they 'don't have the funding to continue the project', and the aircraft will be sent to Davis-Monthan.

Must be the lowest total time 747 ever sent to become a rattlesnake farm.

[mlenoch]

It is already at DM. It appears to be simply parked on an active ramp in the middle of the 'delivery' area. It's where aircraft being prepared to fly out are parked.
VL

[JohnB]

Sad to see, it might have played a useful role if we ever faced another SCUD outbreak...

When I was at Dyess, the locals were lobbying hard to get any operational unit stationed there.

As far as the plane goes, avionics test bed or perhaps a tanker come to mind.
Hopefully, they won't part it out, though I guess the spares could find their way into the E-4 or VC-25 fleet.

[The Inspector]

It might become another E-4 after the chemical laser stuff is removed.
The 41 section forward cap is fairly easy to replace if Boeings AOG does the work since they've done a few over the years

[Enemy Ace]

Would be interesting to know if the project was ever really doable or if they took it as far as it could go.. and then realized it just wasn't gonna ever really work well.
Sure hope they didn't just throw it under the bus to make more funds available for the F-35 or whatever..... The way the 117's got scrapped to make some money for the F-22's. (Or so I was told.)
If nothing else I hope a lot was learned.

[JohnB]

As i recall from reading in Aviation Week, the chemical laser worked fine....so if it was a hardware issue, it could have been more of a targeting issue?

I also seem to recall that perhaps the chemical-type laser has been superceeded by improved tachnology.

[RickH]

I was told by someone at Holloman that it shot down missiles and a few F-4s.

[The Inspector]

There were software issues that couldn't be readily or economically fixed, the system worked once and failed on the second try, the DoD got tired of shovelling money into what they deemed to be an open firepit, and according to the article in the paper, they couldn't justify the zillions that would be involved in buying a fleet of them since the laser was fairly short range to hit a target and that put the airplane in a danger zone, sorry Zarkov, no death ray

[Malo83]

Heading out to Pasture


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