I agree with you.I would say it could be used for ground targets. Just give the coordinates of the target an POOF!!! This is the perfect weapon for taking out targets that need to be taken care of.
Until some of the Axis of Evil achieve similar capacity... this could be worse than nukes because it would not generate any radioactive fallout to make subsequent ground based conquest harder. Think of a party like Iran or North Korea not nuking, but lasering targets in Washington.