US kills MTHEL

Sources inform ''Globes'' that the Pentagon has killed the joint US-Israeli Natulus mobile tactical high energy laser (MTHEL), designed to intercept aerial targets such as rockets, missiles, artillery shells and other aerial threats at ranges of 5-6 kilometers.

Over the past three years, Israel’s defense establishment developed a system to use lasers to intercept kassam rockets. The defense establishment has been informed of the US decision. A senior Ministry of Defense official said, “I feel we’ve missed an immense opportunity.”

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Prof. Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael, who served as IDF chief R&D officer when the decision to develop the Nautilus was taken said, “This is a fateful decision. We’ll have to live with kassam rockets for decades. Technologically, the laser system was the only solution in the foreseeable future that could intercept them.”

Read more here.

This is another not-so-surprising-turn-of-events. The US has been heavily investing in solid state lasers and the fact that the MIRACL->THEL->MTHEL line of lasers are chemical lasers and use deuterium and fluorine to work. Fluorine on the battlefield?! Yikes!