Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Boeing laser downs UAVs

Unmanned aerial systems may be the rage, but Boeing has just announced the successful test of a mobile laser system to bring them down. The just-announced test was conducted in May, and demonstrated the ability of mobile laser weapon systems to track and destroy small UAVs. During the tests at the Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, Calif., the Mobile Active Targeting Resource for Integrated eXperiments (MATRIX) used a single, high-brightness laser beam to shoot down five UAVs at various ranges. (Source: Boeing, 11/18/09) Gulf Coast note: Boeing has operations in the Gulf Coast; the Gulf Coast has several unmanned systems operations.