I’m dubious of the technology.

Pentagon’s raygun-packing 747 to visit DC
By Lewis Page
Published Wednesday 20th June 2007 13:14 GMT

The Airborne Laser, the US Missile Defence programme’s raygun-equipped jumbo jet, is to visit Washington tonight in an attempt to drum up support on Capitol Hill.

Airborne Laser aircraft

The Airborne Laser aircraft, intended to explode ICBMs shortly after liftoff.

The Missile Defence Agency says (pdf) the flying energy-weapon platform will fly into Andrews airforce base outside DC from its normal home at Edwards AFB in California. The 747 is expected to make a night landing, before being shown off to politicos, officials, and the media. It will return to the west coast on 21 June.

The Airborne Laser is a modified Boeing 747-400 freighter aircraft intended to use a Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) to destroy a hostile ballistic missile during the highly-vulnerable “boost phase” of its trajectory — the first few minutes after it is launched.

Missiles in boost are full of pressurized explosive fuel, so even a relatively feeble zapping could cause them to explode. Also, attacking a multiple-warhead ICBM at this point will take out all its re-entry vehicles in one shot.

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Actually, the missiles are not full of “pressurized explosive fuel”. The last US missile to do this was the Atlas, retired in the 1960s, which used LOX.

Modern missiles use storable liquid propellants, and the most modern, solid fuel, which do not present the same structural vulnerablitiex.