[PvK]

Defending against a few ICBM's is a very different problem from defending against a country with an armageddon-sized nuclear arsenal. If your nation has enough nuclear firepower to destroy the world many times over, no matter where they detonate their warheads, and you were considering nonsense such as ICBM warfare to destroy a continental-sized enemy, you were really talking about a flamethrower battle on the Hindenburg - mutual assured destruction. Against such a threat, lasers aren't much help, because if someone is threatening to destroy the whole planet, they can still do so by detonating their arsenal in their own silos.

Against "emerging nuclear powers", laser ABM might be useful. During the cold war, I was really worried about the idea of Reagan's "Star Wars" concept to try to make the Soviet arsenal obsolete. Imagine if the Soviets had been slowly developing an effective ABM system...

Humans... sigh...

PvK

[ November 04, 2003, 06:56: Message edited by: PvK ]