[brucethemoose2]

Brilliant Pebbles seems way more practical today than 1987. Lots of exotic 80s autonomous systems are now commercial and mundane, and launch costs are plummeting.

Sending up a space laser seems particilarly absurd when one could send up 100(?) drone interceptors for the same cost with less R&D, especially when a drone constellation is far more resilient against anti satellite weapons.

[empedocles]

I agree, though the cost of an exoatmospheric kill vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoatmospheric_Kill_Vehicle is probably high.

And one way to avoid this is the other part of the hypersonic renaissance, which is the ability to dip down into the atmosphere.