Airbone laser: an exchange.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)

John J. Miller's "'Peace Through Light'" (August 13) transmits uncritically the Air Force's hype of the Airborne Laser, and hence misinforms. That Miller did not even understand the hype is shown by his statement that the ABL is supposed to destroy "a mock warhead" in 2009. Nonsense: Nobody has ever imagined it could destroy warheads. The stated mission is--as Miller states later without realizing the difference--shooting missile boosters soon after launch. He was told that the "primitive laser" that destroyed "a few missiles and drones in flight" a generation ago was "unreliable, and potentially hazardous"; that it was housed in an airplane that is "now warehoused at the Air Force Museum"; and that the Airborne Laser is its natural successor. More baloney. The megawatt laser that destroyed things beginning in 1978 at Capistrano, Calif., was more powerful, and more fully approximated an operational system, than anything the ABLprogram has produced. The main difference is that the earlier laser generator, designed to work in the vacuum of space, did not need the Rube Goldberg devices that the Air Force has been trying to perfect to create synthetic vacuums for each and every shot that the ABL would take. Miller repeats that the earlier laser was "bulky." If he was shown pictures, the people showing him may not have known that over 90 percent of the bulk was the equipment for simulating space. This is what the Air Force has been trying to shrink, in a dumb effort to avoid using the device in its natural environment. The Bush team, like the Clintonites, vetoed a space deployment out of deference to the Russians.

Putting the laser on an airplane in the atmosphere also means butting up against some other intractable laws of nature. Miller credits the claim that, by constantly coupling its shots with a low-power laser to measure the atmosphere's penetrability, the ABL's mirrors could push the beam through the air by compensating ...