In an effort to destroy things with greater precision, Boeing has installed a big laser onto a big plane, earlier this month.

The laser is a high-energy chemical oxygen iodine (COIL) laser, and weighs in the neighbourhood of 12,000 pounds. The laser was fitted onto the workhorse of the Air Force, which has been in service more than 50 years: the turboprop powered C-130 Hercules military cargo plane.

After a period of testing, sometime in 2008 Boeing plans to demonstrate the platform to a wider audience. The test will call for the laser to be fired in-flight, from a precision-controlled rotating turrert coming out of the plane's belly, at mock-targets on the ground, such as trucks. While very precise, the laser is also quite lethal: it is able to melt through metal, and if an unfortunate unprotected person was caught in its fire, they would have their organs cooked in a couple of microseconds. If a situation called for less lethalitity, the laser could also be used to merely disable vechicles. Beyond the inherient accuracy of lasers, an added benefit of this big flying laser platform is the extended range of its targeting systems.

The Advanced Tactical Laser program uses some of the technology from the earlier developed ABL (Boeing's Airborne Laser) program, which had a smaller laser fitted on a 747, for ballistic missile-defense. The ABL program went into flight-testing last year, and Boeing hopes that in 2009, it will be ready to test against flying missiles.

Note: The Photoshop'ed picture above is an ABL weapon system, not the newer, ATL weapon platform.