[webstersII]

"I bet it would be good for anti aircraft and anti missile."

Maybe, but you have to keep it trained on the incoming threat for long enough, a difficult task if the threat is coming in at +Mach numbers.

The targeting systems are the main weakness in the SDI scenarios for ICBMs, although considerable progress has been made since Reagan first coined the term "Star Wars".

[Laserman]

Actually, for SDI type systems the ATP (acquisition, tracking and pointing) and Fire Control are on the same order of difficulty as the laser device itself, unless you consider full blown scenarios with 100's or 1000's of simultaneous launches and deployment of 10,000 midcourse objects. Then ATP-FC is THE challenge. The laser device problem is how to either put many (10-30 or more) huge lasers into space and keep them running, or how to relay a ground generated beam to the target via big space mirrors. Both are tough problems.