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U.S.-Israeli Laser Downs Large Rocket NewsMax.com WiresWHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M. – A U.S.-Israeli laser designed to protect northern Israel from missile attacks downed its largest rocket to date during a test over the southern New Mexico desert, the Army said Friday. The ground-based Tactical High Energy Laser, or THEL, locked on and destroyed the 11-foot-long, 6-inch-diameter rocket in flight over White Sands Missile Range on Tuesday, said Pam Rogers, a U.S. Army spokeswoman in Huntsville, Ala. The stationary test version of THEL has shot down smaller Katyusha rockets and artillery shells in the past, she said. The system, which eventually would be mobile, uses an advanced radar to spot and track incoming rockets and then fires a deuterium fluoride chemical laser to destroy them. THEL, being developed by Northrop-Grumman Corp., has passed tests at White Sands since 2000, said Bob Bishop, a company spokesman in Redondo Beach, Calif. The company could deliver a mobile prototype by 2007 or 2008 if it gets a contract this summer, he said. The project appears in the U.S. defense budget for fiscal 2004 with a $56 million allocation, he said.
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