The United States government first started experimenting with lasers in the early nineteen sixties. The Russians were working along the same lines, but never had the kind of resources that we had to do the same things.
The problem, as the article highlighted, was power supply miniaturization. Now a recent article that we saw posted to FR spoke of an Air Force R&D project to build an airborne atomic reactor. Now why would anyone want to build an airborne reactor just so it could fit it into a widebody?
Do the math, folks. Imagine a COIL or one of more elaborate devices with the punch of a small nuclear reactor to provide power.
THEL has been around for some time.
....so long that the services spend advertising dollars hawking their supposed skills at THEL to the Pentagon and the Congress.
I strongly suspect that there are far more elaborate black projects underway, possibly involving plasma weaponry. And yes, the Stealth that crashed in Serbia back in 1999 was an older model: the new stuff is so far out we have no idea as to its capabilities (personally, I think that we've been testing manned hypersonic vehicles for some time now). One of the most talked about vehicles is something called "AURORA", which is supposedly an urban legend that got its start when the name appeared as an Air Force line item back in the eighties. However....
....while our friend AURORA may be named something else altogether, there is a general consensus that the SR-71 isn't in the spy plane business anymore for a dadgum good reason. It's been replaced, and probably by something like the aircraft pictured above, which is said to move at suborbital heights and at hypersonic speeds.
In short, there is a LOT of wierd stuff out at Groom Lake. No one is allowed near there for a set of very good reasons. And of course, they also keep other things at Area 51....
Watch the Skies!
Be Seeing You,
Chris