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Thel will shoot down everything you want shoot down
and could be up and running if the DEM's didn't pull the funding out from under it. G.W. is trying to get the funding back right now.

Aerospace & Defense
Laser Systems
Government Products and Programs: Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL)

Defense at the Speed of Light

Theater threats - short-range rockets and artillery, UAVs, cruise missiles, pop-up helicopters - can appear very late, without warning. Countering these late detection threats requires a weapon that is fast, accurate and close-in. It demands the speed-of-light engagement of a laser.

We know it works; lethality has been demonstrated in live shoot-downs. A TRW-built high energy laser successfully targeted and shot down an operational short-range rocket in a 1996 flight test - on the first firing. That successful field test was made possible by 20 years of ongoing research and development in laser beam generation and pointing technologies - groundwork that has made THEL a mature short to medium-range air defense capability.

The World's First Laser-Based Air Defense System

TRW is, under contract to the U.S. Army Space & Missile Defense Command, building a THEL demonstrator. The system features mature technologies and a proven deuterium fluoride chemical laser. It will be field tested at the U.S. Army's high energy laser system test facility at White Sands Missile Range, NM. With lethality already demonstrated, the final steps in validating THEL as a weapon are field tests with its C3I control system and radar against live, flying threats. The effort, a collaboration between the U.S. Army and Israel, will use THEL to kill a number of short-range rockets.

When you don't see a threat until very late, or unmasked time is short, you don't get a second chance. In field tests against short-range rockets, TRW's laser has never missed.