Aircraft like the F-15, F-22, F-35, and the E-10MC2A with AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radars will be able to fry the circuitry in enemy aircraft and missiles. Basically these radars can be used as HPMs (High-Powered-Microwaves) which cause an EMP affect on electronics they target. The new air force E-10 aircraft will be able to "zap" cruise missiles up to 180km away! F-22s and F-35s with smaller radars will be less effective, but have the capability nonetheless. More importantly, range depends on the targets EM shielding and the power needed to hurt it. (newslink) A ground based version of this system, called Vigilant Eagle will be able to protect US airports from shoulder-fired missiles while costing much less than outfitting each individual airliner with an ECM system. (Vigilant Eagle link) just thought some might be interested

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Cool, sounds like a pretty efficient anti-missile system, would be pretty handy to fire it at an enemy aircraft too (although missiles work to, not against this though). The 'Vigilant Eagle' I would expect to be more useful, lets face it very few of us own an F-15, but quite a few of us would rether not be shot down whilst in a commercial airliner, hopefully these systems will have become common place in airports.

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Nice, but I'm wondering how much electrical power to establish HPM to 180 km away
This is good weapon for fight against any crime, but as long terrorist doesn't have the technology we will save.

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finally a development which I don't dislike for being de facto useless though it might be interesting to see what a person with destructive ideas could do to a plane when he or she somehow receives control over one of these systems... ;p

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welcome to the age of nuclear accelarators people thats the only to do by putting a small nuke reactor in the planes to use the energy to power it.

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Cool, that is some awesome modern technology. I wonder when there will be a next war for it to be used. Although I know its going to be really efective in defense

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That sounds pretty cool! When I first saw this topic title I thought you where talking about something from Star Wars, but that is way cooler. it's useful too, it will help save lives and stuff...

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yeah, and radar-guided rays are way less likely to miss the target and it's way more likely that they actually leave the ground *cough* didn't the Pentagon declare the last Star Wars-test launch as successful even though the counter-missile didn't leave the launch platform? ;D

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well heres the thing about lasers they go through objects thats means anything in that lasers path is going to get cook.

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I suppose we can ignore the threat a ground-based laser weapon [those like in CD-drives are not considered a weapon in this case ] poses to anything in its path since that's just some insects, birds, sometimes planes and as it's supposed to be, an unfriendly missile. When a plane fires a laser at a missile below it might hit something it wasn't supposed to but that will be called "collateral damage" :/

anyways, assuming a hit quote of 100% it might be pretty safe since a missile has metal shielding on all sides and not only where the laser hits it, so you'd have to cut through the first layer of metal and the navigation system (or the explosives, causing them to explode before the missile reaches its destination, thereby rendering it undangerous) before the laser hits the second layer of metal, which will probably take another couple of seconds...

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