That was the first thing that popped into my head. We've been shooting down missiles with lasers for twenty years in our R&D programs, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if we had deployable assets of that type. And "inflight motor failure" is THE failure mode for a laser intercept. I've seen footage of anti-missile laser tests and it is a very discrete way of knocking out a missile; you don't see anything, but the missile motor suddenly eats itself in the same way it would if there was an engineering failure.
The enemies of freedom should be afraid... very afraid. IF we find them. WE WILL hit them... because we can.
There may in fact be... a whole fleet of USA... DEATHSTARS, in the tradition of Darth Vader's regime.
no place to hide.