But not right away. The Oshkosh Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT), an eight-wheeled, 500-horsepower boxy behemoth, will be shipped to Boeing’s Huntsville, Ala., facility this spring for integration with the beam control system. But a demonstration weapon won’t be fired at real targets until fiscal 2011, and even then a surrogate low-power beam will take the place of the real high-energy weapon.
However, the move from design to fabrication is a big step, taking the Army’s High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator program out of the drawing room and onto the firing range. Boeing is developing a bevy of tactical laser systems, including the Airborne Laser and the Free Electron Laser, and proving that one system works will go a long way toward developing the others.
The laser that will ride aboard the HEMTT A4 is a solid-state bad boy capable of countering rocket, mortar and artillery projectiles with extreme precision. The control system can acquire, track and select a vulnerable targeting area on a moving target in the amount of time it takes the laser device to send a beam to the targeting system, which aligns it for the kill. In other words, really, really quickly. So don’t let the lumbering HEMTT A4 fool you; when it comes to warfighting capability, there’s nothing else like it.
[Boeing]
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