Now time to shine Military style. Has anyone really noticed the countries producing these weapons those? .. North Korea, China, US? Don't you think with a laser of that calliba, it would not be allowed under U.N international laws of WMD?

If you cannot have Necular Weapons, then why can we have lasers that can easily seach and destroy this weapons from miles away?

On another not, also from Australian Air Force knowledge, technology these days would be no worries about trying to fly a laser and try and source your enermy down. The main forcus for a laser to be fitted to an aircraft, hightens the risk of flying in the military.

Being a pilot you need great aircraft control, and your aircraft is unstable after being shot in the main body, imagine someone shooting at your 'laser', that with one shot could poitonally blow up mid air.

Trust me on this, you won't be seeing any of this happen besides testing for at least another 10 years. Let alone find pilots stupid enough to volunteer to try, so once again i see the U.S Air Force providing more pilots for dangerous missons not needed.

At present, it would be very dangerous for the U.S. department to succeed. If they did, other world powers would try to suppress them before the weapons rose to a considerable level of power. After all, if the U.S. was known to have "weapons of mass destruction", I find it very likely that another nation will prevent them from existing.

Also, I think that the lasers being developed are more reminiscent of the fictional lasers used in the olden days of the Star Trek's "United Federation of Planets" than anything in Star Wars. Also, imagine if humans developed something (in the future) much like the Star Trek phasers (phased energy weapons).

"Fire all phaser banks, Mr. Chekov!" -Captain Kirk to Weapons Officer Pavel Chekov

Yea gree it does, but I think that it was unneceserly to build it... Just spending money for war.

The life is getting more close to star wars out there.

Hhahaha. It would be really funny with all those nations that are sort of starving but prefer to invest in nuclear weapons. Imagine them getting ready to threat the world or something and this technology blowing up their millions or resources and research in the air. About hitting the missile I think that computers will take care of that easily.

What next? Light sabres. I'm a big Star Wars fan and was thinking of light sabres when I saw this Topic. Nice info though.

It's amazing what movies can make The army do. Especially Sci-fi films like Star wars, soon the army would want to make gravitational tanks. Then again why not. It would be great to see one of those AT walker things, especially with the US flag on it. Also a shield or something those will be more usefull than lasers, or maybe a cheap food product that they can provide to poor starving people.

This sounds similar to a technology I hard of. It is a cheap, yet extremely efficient laser that targets missiles, and always hits them. My friend told me a story about the Russians firing a missile at Canada. One of the Canadian ships saw the missile, aimed at it with the laser, and blew it out of the sky very casually. Next the Russians got a phone call from the Canadian, and said it was an "accident". I don't know how any country could accidently fire a rocket at another country. Crazy story, but true.

I'm sure that anyone who would have their explosives shot out of the sky without inflicting any damage would be quick to appologize (or make up a story) as well.

As some have said, there is almost no way a human could use this weapon the way they do in Star Wars/Trek. First of all, the target/aircraft would be moving too fast for human reflexes to react properly. Secondly, the laser would be invisible; it wouldn't be the neat little colored beam that one sees in the movies. A computer would have to control the weapon (which may cause potential hacking of the weapon to become a problem).

Concerning the use of a laser as a weapon on general, it seems to me that it wouldn't be very difficult to defend against; one must simply cover the missle/plane with a highly reflective surface, since a laser is simply intense light.

As for the comments concerning a light saber, don't hold your breath; that's a completely fictional concept, and there is no proof that suggests a thick laser that completely ends at a certain point is even possible.

Wow. Something like this could really come in handy when trying to take out an anti-vehicle type weapon. I wonder how fast a weapon like that would over heat and how long it ould take to cool down and what the rate f fire would be.