Via Glenn Reynolds (again!) NAVY PLANS DISPOSABLE RAY GUNS.
I've been waiting for us to be able to employ lasers for defense purposes. Especially for missle defense. We've been planning "star wars" type missle defense systems for more than a decade, and in Iraq, for the first time, we successfully used them; very successfully in fact. But with those missle defense systems you're trying to hit a missle with a missle, which isn't easy. With a laser it'd be much easier for a computer to target and destroy a missle in the air.
Plus, as the article mentions, lasers can be used militarily for many things besides missle defense. I'm looking forward to all the great things our military figures out it can do with them.
I saw this and I thought of you Keith: http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/toys/60e2/