Airborne Laser Closer To Completion

The US Missile Defense Agency rolled out an airborne laser aircraft on Friday, the latest development in a missile-defense system that was once ridiculed as a Star Wars fantasy. In a ceremony at the Boeing Co's Integrated Defense Systems facility in Wichita, the agency announced it was ready to flight test some of the low-power systems on the ABL aircraft, a modified Boeing 747-400F designed to destroy enemy missiles. Lt. Gen Henry Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said he embraced early critics' comparison of the laser-equipped plane to the Star Wars movies. The laser weapon's system is designed to detect, track and destroy ballistic missiles in their boost flight phase. It will likely be 2008 before the program is ready to fire at a missile in flight, and it wouldn't be operational until the middle or late part of the decade.

For the bombs that do make it to US cities through increasingly advanced missile defense systems, see the damage radius here. Bin Laden plan accordingly ( lol, just kidding ;)