The army’s Space and Missile Defence Command is also in the game. Its Joint High Power Solid State Laser, a prototype of which should be ready next summer, is meant to destroy rockets the size of the Katyushas used by insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, and by Hizbullah in Lebanon.

The most ambitious laser project of all, though, is the Airborne Laser, or ABL, being developed by the American Missile Defence Agency and Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. The beam is generated by mixing chemicals in a reactor known as a COIL (chemical oxygen iodine laser) and packs a far bigger punch than the electrically generated beams emitted by systems such as LADS. When mounted in the nose-cone of a specially converted Boeing 747, an ABL should be capable of disabling a missile from a distance of several hundred kilometres.

The aim is to hit large ballistic missiles, including ICBMs, just after they are launched—in the boost phase. The ABL is therefore a son of Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars scheme, although in that programme, which dates back to the 1980s, the lasers would have operated from space.

There are many advantages to attacking a missile during its boost phase. First, it is still travelling slowly, so it is easier to hit. Second, it is easy to detect because of its exhaust plume (once the boost phase is over, the engine switches off and the missile follows Newton’s law of gravity to its target). Third, if it has boosters that are designed to be jettisoned, it will be a larger target when it is launched. Fourth, any debris will fall on those who launched it, rather than those at whom it was aimed.

The ATL’s supporters discuss such possibilities as disabling vehicles by destroying their wheels and disrupting enemy communications by severing telephone lines. Killing troops is rarely mentioned. However, John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military think-tank in Alexandria, Virginia, who is an expert on ATL, says its main goal is, indeed, to kill enemy combatants. Surely this is forbidden?

Boeing is unwilling to discuss the matter and John Wachs, the head of the Space and Missile Defence Command’s Directed Energy Division, observes that it is "politically sensitive". The public may have misgivings about a silent and invisible weapon that would boil the body’s fluids before tearing it apart in a burst of vapour.

That seems oddly squeamish, though. War is not a pleasant business. It is doubtful that being burst by a laser is worse than being hit by a burst from a machine gun. As the Sudanese found out at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, the year that "The War of the Worlds" was published, that is pretty nasty too.

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