Creating an Airborne Laser Lab

Editor’s Note: In his new book Lasers, Death Rays, and the Long, Strange Quest for the Ultimate Weapon (Prometheus Books, 2018), OSA Fellow and frequent OPN contributor Jeff Hecht tells the story of directed-energy weapons, from their earliest incarnations in myth and science fiction to efforts to create battle-ready devices in the wake of the laser’s invention. In this lightly edited excerpt from the book, Hecht recounts the history of the Airborne Laser Laboratory, a 1970s-to-early-1980s effort to press the recently invented CO₂ laser into service. In the previous decade, he notes, problems scaling up existing lasers to battle-relevant power levels had nearly caused military-laser efforts to run aground. “Then,” Hecht writes, “a rocket scientist had a brainstorm.”