April 25, 2004

Unmanned US aircraft fired missile at Iraqi insurgents on April 11

An unmanned US aircraft fired a missile at Iraqi insurgents attempting to fire mortars at a US air base 10 days ago, killing or wounding several of them, the US Air Force disclosed Wednesday.

A Predator MQ-1 aircraft fired a Hellfire missile at those preparing to attack Balad Air Base on April 11, a day after a US airman was killed and two others wounded in a mortar attack, it said in a statement from Qatar.

Excellent!
If we can get the bad guys without sending up a plane or a helicopter with a highly-trained and valuable pilot, that's a very good thing and perhaps with some fine-tuning, these armed Predators will make those "Black Hawk Down" scenarios few and far between if not a thing of the past.
Then, there's this development in Missile Defense tech news, also:
Integrated Testing Of First Airborne Ray Gun Completed

Lockheed Martin has completed factory testing of the optical benches for the Airborne Laser's Beam Control/Fire Control (BC/FC) system. The Airborne Laser (ABL) is the first megawatt-class laser weapon system to be carried on a specially configured 747-400F aircraft, designed to autonomously detect, track and destroy hostile ballistic missiles.

The Beam Control/Fire Control system will accurately point, focus and fire the laser to provide sufficient energy to destroy the missile while it is still in the highly vulnerable boost phase of flight - before separation of its warheads.

The ABL program is managed by the Missile Defense Agency and is executed by the U.S. Air Force from Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M.
[...]
Lockheed Martin performed extensive testing to verify that the system accurately controls every mirror at operational data rates. The tests validated that the BC/FC system is capable of acquiring a target, initiating tracking of the target, initiating atmospheric compensation, firing the high-energy laser and shutting down the system while maintaining beam quality and accuracy. To accomplish the tasks at the required speeds, the BC/FC system executes over 600,000 lines of "C" and Ada high-order software using the computer processing power of more than 80 Power Pcs.

"These computers are capable of executing over 72 billion instructions per second," said Lockheed Martin ABL program director Rob Brimmer.

Well, wake up Buck Rogers!
The future is here!
Looks as if Missile Defense is becoming more operationally real all the time and not a moment too soon!
Great work, America and hopefully, Lockheed Martin--a huge D/FW employer--will spread their good fortune around North Texas!
And how about those computers to run the laser?
72 billion commands a second?!
Is this a great (and smart!) country or what?