[Brett66]

Joe Conason's strategy is to lose a couple of cities to nukes and then determine if we need a missile shield. I think his stupid mantra of "NMD wouldn't have stopped this " is wrong.
If we have orbital lasers that could take out ballistic missiles then it could be easily modified to down a terrorist controlled airplane. It could stop it faster than we could scramble a fighter to stop it.

[Steve0113]

If we have orbital lasers that could take out ballistic missiles then it could be easily modified to down a terrorist controlled airplane. It could stop it faster than we could scramble a fighter to stop it.

Probably no modifications would be needed. A commercial airliner is a much larger and slower target than a ballistic missile.