The United States is incredibly dependent on its space assets in support of national objectives. Directed energy weapons can not only provide offensive ASAT capabilities, but can serve as a significant defense against missile- or even space-based kinetic ASAT weapons. The advantage of a directed energy weapon is that it has the ability to travel at the speed of light and target missiles during their vulnerable boost phase within seconds. During the 1990s and 2000s, the United States pursued directed energy weapons based on megawatt-class chemical lasers. Two of systems, the Airborne Laser (ABL) and Space-Based Laser (SBL), were complementary, but never made it beyond the early testing phase.

The concept of the Airborne Laser came to fruition on a modified Boeing 747 known as the YAL-1A Airborne Laser Testbed (ABLT). In early 2010, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announced that ABLT successfully destroyed two test missiles [reuters.com], saying at the time that "The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defense, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometers, and at a low cost per intercept attempt compared to current technologies." Unfortunately, ABLT was $4 billion over budget and eight years behind schedule. Political and economic realities meant that the US could "no longer continue to do everything and explore every potential technology". On February 14, 2012, MDA announced that the ABLT program was terminated [mda.mil], transitioning into long-term storage at the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis Monthan AFB — "the Boneyard".

The Space-Based Laser (SBL) concept is the notion of locating a high-powered laser in space, with a similar ability to target missiles in their boost phase. A constellation of 20 SBLs would be able to provide continuous global coverage, and target nearly any launch -- including ASAT weapons. A test firing of a Space-Based Laser Integrated Flight Experiment (SBL-IFX) was originally schedule for 2012 to demonstrate SBL's capabilities. This project became so complex and expensive that MDA suspended research and development in 2002 [missilethreat.com] — another victim of economic priorities, and a desire to focus resources on existing, proven kinetic systems.

If such systems are thought to have so much potential and capability, why are they no longer pursued? The answer is primarily one of cost. Further, if the US possessed such a comprehensive anti-missile and anti-ASAT capability, it is unlikely that an adversary would use a kinetic ASAT weapon. As adversaries such as China, Russia, and Iran turn to cyber, it becomes more likely that cyber, conventional jamming, and EW capabilities would be used to target US space systems. It is reasonable that the US response should be in kind. One example: China is currently fielding the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM). Instead of using complicated missile defense systems or directed energy weapons to target it, and the current US strategy is indeed one of jam, spoof — and then shoot, if necessary [wired.com], with the idea being to "break as many links as possible" in the chain, including via cyber and EW. Cyber can act as a significant force multiplier against even conventional weapons systems — which can work both for and against us. China has already demonstrated [guardian.co.uk] the potential effectiveness of cyber capabilities against US space systems. Resources devoted to enhancing our offensive and defensive cyber capabilities in the context of space systems and missile defense is money well spent.

It's easy to look these thing up on wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. You should try it rather than making a terrible estimate. The military is actually slightly over 20% of the US government spending.

But the chemicals can do the trick, for the time being, and there is still a lot of work to do on target keeping.

The big question for me has to do less with technology and more with chain of command. I mean, to be useful this thing has to be used in the boost phase. The first minute of flight, say. It's going to take a few seconds to realize the target is there, and then they have to get the beam on it PDQ. That means the system can never work in a surprise attack - the only way you could possibly shoot down a target is if you had standing orders to fry anything that launches.

You may want to look at this [thinkprogress.org] and this [crooksandliars.com] and this [crooksandliars.com].

Or you could just get all your "facts" from FOX.

Republicans love to proclaim that they're deficit hawks, unlike the tax-and-spend Democrats. But if you look at what they *do* instead of what they say, it becomes obvious that they're tax-(less)-and-spend-(more) hawks.

They only object to spending money when it won't help someone who doesn't need it.

Seven Democrats, and nine Republicans. Who do you think is in charge?

Now, time for your civics lesson. Go to the department webpage [house.gov], scroll down to the Strategic Forces subcommittee markup, watch the little five minute video, and read the attached file (search for the word "laser").

What you'll find is that the truth is a lot more banal than what gets printed in the papers. They're requesting an extra $30 million to keep to project in stasis while they look into whether or not it should really be shut down. The whole thing is a couple paragraphs out of over 200 pages. The Democrats had some concerns with the proposal, but those don't get announced yet -- instead, they're submitted in writing sometime in the next week.

This is small potatoes. Really small potatoes. If we reach the point where they're seriously considering funding this, then complain and point fingers. For now, its a handful of people asking a slightly larger group to ask an even larger group to spend 0.004% of the military's budget on looking into whether or not this project is worth preserving.

Hah! I went and checked the Wikipedia source. You missed the start of the sentence, "If the ABL achieves its design goals"... If they achieve its design goals, ever. Highly unlikely. The whole thing is a massive pork-barrel exercise by the US Congress. I'm glad to be living in UK. At least we waste our money on aircraft carriers which will be built and immediately sold / mothballed. For the price of this plane, we should get a couple of carriers (I can't believe US spent $5b on this stupidity).