It might be an interesting start for a movie, but not so much in real life...well maybe.
Psssst....Wanna buy some cool laser technology?
A number of news outlets, including AP and NBC, say that John Raese, West Virginia's Republican nominee for Senate actually wants to deploy such a system.
"If there is a rogue missile aimed at our country, we have 33 minutes to figure out what we're going to do," Raese said told the crowd at a recent campaign stop, according to NBC. "We are sitting with the only technology in the world that works and it's laser technology. We need 1,000 laser systems put in the sky and we need it right now. That is [of] paramount importance."
It's not totally off the wall to suggest such a system, after all President Ronald Reagan in the 1980's proposed a satellite-based system of space-based lasers to protect the world from Soviets missile attacks -- often derided as the Star Wars plan. The National Missile Defense system proposed in the 1990s included a laser component to defend the US and its allies. And who really knows what the Air Force has onboard its orbiting super-secret X-37B spacecraft?
Still the idea is far-fetched for most experts.
NBC reports: "'The kind of research Raese advocates could take two decades to develop at current funding levels. And deploying the technology would require complex treaties among world powers,' according to Riki Ellison of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. Ellison calls that a significant policy challenge."
To say the least.
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