The Danger Room had an interesting scoop yesterday on the Marine Corps’ request for
The ability to strike ground targets with an airborne laser has been a mild obsession of mine for sometime now. I first became interested in the subject when discussing Boeing’s Airborne Laser with a source who claimed that the weapon, designed to strike in-flight missiles at high altitude, might also be able to target ground forces. If that were true–the applications for such a technology are limitless–from knocking down sea-skimming missiles, to taking out lone targets from a stand-off distance with no threat of collateral damage. Unfortunately, I’m not terribly optimistic that this type of system will be deployed any time soon (and neither is the Danger Room). I spoke with John Pike a while back about Air Borne Laser–he said he thought it had the potential to “solve the North Korea problem”, but he was deeply suspicious that the program would have the capacity to strike ground targets:
