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Boeing’s Plane-Mounted Laser Cuts Into Truck

This article is over 15 years old and may contain outdated information

Fulfilling whatever quota for gleeful, wanton destruction it might have, aeronautics giant Boeing has released footage of a plane-mounted laser slicing through the hood of a truck.

Now I won’t claim that this is the greatest way to destroy a civilian car — that honor will always belong to the “giant metal dinosaur devours compact” class of videos — but it should be pointed out, repeatedly and enthusiastically, that Boeing’s laser is cutting through that metal hood while strapped to the front of a plane in flight.

If you were strapped to the front of a plane you’d probably have trouble breathing properly, let alone mangling Japanese pickups.

What’s more, the video’s description claims that this laser isn’t even the biggest one Boeing has. To wit:

This video shows the effect of the high-energy laser beam from the Boeing Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL), fired at a stationary truck from a US Air Force NC-130H flying over White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, on August 30, 2009. The ATL is a chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL), and is a scaled-down version of the megawatt-class high-energy laser in the Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser (ABL).

Yeah, that’s the “scaled-down” version. I’m trying to imagine the “scaled-up” version and all I’m coming up with is that final scene in Real Genius.

(Via Geekologie)

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