[me_again]

This was one of the ideas pursued in the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative, aka Star Wars. They weren't able to develop a system that would work against ICBMs. Powering an aircraft is both easier and harder; the aircraft presumably isn't making evasive maneuvers and trying to stop you from powering it, but the economic and safety constraints are harder.

[ben_w]

IIRC, one of the problems with SDI was that at the time the only way to make lasers powerful enough to destroy an ICBM was to pump the lasing medium with a nuke, making them one-shot devices.

Sensing may still be a problem today, especially as stealth is also improving, but detection in general is much easier than it was in the Regan era.