Word: shootdown
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...shootdown itself was impressive. A basketball-size beam traveling 670 million m.p.h. (1,078 km/h) - the speed of light - blazed from the 747's nose. The beam focused on the missile and - like a kid torturing an ant with a magnifying glass - incinerated it. It fit the criterion enunciated in 2008 by Boeing's laser chief Mike Rinn: "There's nothing like flaming wreckage" to prove such lasers are not science fiction. (See the obstacles in the way of the Strategic Defense Initiative...
...true, Defense Secretary Robert Gates killed plans last year to buy a fleet of lasered 747s. However, Gates has continued R&D, and that gives missile-defense backers a flickering flame of hope. There's no doubt the companies involved - and their supporters in Congress - will use the shootdown to try to resurrect the program. After all, the heart of the program isn't a lumbering fleet of airliners but the chemical-oxygen-iodine lasers within...
...hubris, compounded by the frisson of excitement generated by theoretical invulnerability they provide. "The airborne laser is initially proven and should continue to be developed, tested and even deployed if necessary," Riki Ellison, a former NFL linebacker who now heads the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, said shortly after the shootdown. "The ability of our military to use the airborne laser ... to engage and destroy multiple Iranian missiles in seconds over Iran could be a critical asset if in the future a situation arose between Iran and the United States...