On February 12, 2010, the U.S. Missile Defense...

The ALTB project is one of the MDA"s most ambitious and long-term programs. Washington launched its initial research in this sphere in the 1970s. At that time, an NKC-135-ALL aircraft, a modified version of the KC-135 Stratotanker, was built and used as an airborne laboratory.

United Technologies built a 10-ton, 04-0.5-MWt CO2 laser system for the program. The NKC-135-ALL was involved in a series of tests in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Although the tests proved that a laser weapon was feasible, it had a range of just a few kilometers and therefore lacked any military prospects.

In 1985, a laser weapon used in ground tests heated up the stationary fuel tank of a Titan-1 intercontinental ballistic missile simulating a Soviet ICBM a thousand meters away causing it to explode.

Such tests, as well as the NKC-135-ALL program, were conducted under the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program. However it was impossible to develop a feasible missile defense system

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