Word: lasered
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...ideal weapon? Not quite. In theory, X-ray lasers could be based in space, but that might mean keeping something like 1,400 atomic bombs in low orbits constantly crisscrossing the Soviet Union. Says Coll, rather delicately: "I don't think it's going to be politically acceptable to put bombs in orbit." In practice, the X-ray lasers would have to be launched from earth at the first warning of attack in a "pop-up" defense (they are in fact the only laser devices compact enough for such a defense). To get high enough fast enough, they would probably...
...real problems. Flashing instructions from Washington to submarines in the first moments of nuclear war would be difficult, even assuming the submarines, held in fixed locations, had not been found and sunk by the Soviets in advance of a nuclear assault. If the subs survived and launched their laser-generating bombs, a greater difficulty would arise. All laser beams have trouble cutting through the atmosphere to destroy missiles at the start of their flight, but X-ray lasers are among the least penetrating. They could hit missiles only at the top of the boost phase, and probably would be best...
...laboratories they can be accelerated to more than 99% of the speed of light by massive devices that can be two miles in length or four miles in circumference. A device that could accelerate the particles to perhaps half the speed of light, which would be poky by laser standards, but adequate for missile defense, might still weigh 500 tons, and hundreds if not thousands of the contraptions would have to be lifted into orbit. Particle beams have even more trouble penetrating the atmosphere than X rays, so they would be more useful for post-boost and mid-course interception...
...Indeed, a terminal defense of sorts could be put into place right now. Main drawbacks: the range of kinetic-energy weapons is measured in hundreds rather than thousands of miles, and the top speed researchers are trying to reach for any projectile is about 25 miles per second. By laser or even particle-beam standards, that is slow, slow, slow...
...York City's World Trade Center by firing a rifle bullet from the top of the John Hancock Building in Chicago. The sensors also would have to flash back instantaneous assessments of what targets had been hit, so that a battle station would not waste vital seconds aiming a laser or particle beam at a missile or warhead already destroyed...