More news from the “death from above” front: Boeing just announced the successful testing of their Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL). Not familiar with the ATL? Well, according to Wired‘s David Hambling here’s what it can do:
The Advanced Tactical Laser, weighing twelve thousand pounds and mounted in a Hercules transport plane, is intended to give Special Forces Command ‘ultra-precision strike capability’ against a wide range of ground targets. Its power is somewhere in the hundred-kilowatt range. According to the developers, the accuracy of this weapon is little short of supernatural. They claim that the pinpoint precision can make it lethal or non-lethal at will. For example, they say it can either destroy a vehicle completely, or just damage the tires to immobilize it.
But that’s not even close to what’s got the military so hot and bothered about this baby’s capabilities. Hambling asserts that Boeing’s ATL “will allow Special Forces to strike with maximum precision, from long distances—without being blamed for the attacks. ‘Plausible deniability’ is how the presentation put it.”
Or, in simpler terms, the ATL can carry out covert assassinations with zero accountability. Cause of death, forensically speaking? Struck by lightning.
From The Register: Secret U.S. Spontaneous Human Combustion Beam Tested