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Saturday, October 28, 2006

US hails airborne laser as weapons milestone

The head of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency on Friday hailed what he described as epochal progress toward putting a high-energy laser aboard a modified Boeing Co. 747 to zap ballistic missiles that could be fired by North Korea and Iran.

But the Pentagon's former top weapons tester cast doubt on project, calling it far from militarily effective and perhaps easily defeated by a simple countermeasure.

The so-called Airborne Laser has been developed at a cost so far of about $3.5 billion with the aim of destroying, at the speed of light, all classes of ballistic missiles shortly after their launch. If successful in flight testing and deployed, it would become part of an emerging U.S. anti-missile shield that also includes land- and sea-based interceptor missiles.

"You've demonstrated capability on the ground," Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering said at a ceremony at which the aircraft was rolled out of a Wichita, Kansas, hangar where it has been undergoing modifications.

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