US to go from "Mighty" to "Almighty"

[Onkel Neal]

Holy crap, just think about how this will make fighters untouchable. SAMs will be zapped 5 miles away at the speed of light.
US military to test lasers on warplanes in 2014

Yippe-ki-yay!

[Herr-Berbunch]

Just think of the accuracy needed, especially in an agile fighter!!! What if you miss, even by hundredths of a degree - you've blinded some kid buying ice cream 100 miles away!

[Sailor Steve]

Whoop! Time to watch Real Genius again. Best use of an airborne laser ever!

[geetrue]

Look how far man has come since Billy Mitchell 1923 to 2013 = 90 years

From above article:
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/01/29/us-military-to-test-lasers-on-warplanes-in-2014/

"U.S. military leaders, scientists and weapon experts also don't necessarily see airborne lasers as battlefield game-changers".

A series of war games held as part of the NeXTech Workshopat the U.S. Army War College in August 2012 found that laser weapons
didn't seem to make a big difference in any of the four scenarios discussed.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/mitch.html

Billy Mitchell was appointed the deputy chief of the Air Service, retaining his one star rank. His relations with superiors continued to sour as he began to attack both the War and Navy Departments for being insufficiently farsighted regarding airpower. His fight with the Navy climaxed with the dramatic bombing tests of 1921 and 1923 that sank several battleships, proving-at least to Mitchell-that surface fleets were obsolete.

Billy Mitchell: Crusader for Air Power
Mitchell was the first prominent American to espouse publicly a vision of strategic airpower that would dominate future war. He believed that aircraft were inherently offensive and were strategic weapons that revolutionized war by allowing a direct attack on the "vital centers" of an enemy country.