Star Wars - The Real Thing

Having worked on bits and pieces of it in the 80's and early 90's, I like to see the work being carried forward. Back then the Dems were opposed to it, but not wishing to be seen as weak on defense, would vote R&D money to whatever part they thought would have the least chance of succeeding.

We engineers took this as a challenge. I believe the average elapsed time between a feasibility study start and having a prototype demonstrating success in testing was about 8 months. A successful test was usually a death knell as the Dems would denounce it as "provocative" and cut off funding, lest their friends the Russkies find themselves outgunned.

Israel has moved ahead with miniscule funding on parts of this and is having some success with what they call "Iron Dome" which turns out to be a pretty good anti-missile system covering a modest area. The statistics can be a bit confusing, but it seems that of 135+ rockets fired into Israel from Gaza, some 46 or so were fired on and 37 of those were hit. Video and all the details here.

I understand they are also experimenting with lasers which turn out to be very accurate, very fast, very expensive, very bulky, and rather short-range. Next year they will be better, I'm sure.