What about atmospheric interference? (And whatever unfortunate soul might be behind the missile assuming the laser misses.)
The field of wavefront adaptive optics[2] was a major civilian-side outcome of that work, with eventual impacts on human vision correction (e.g. LASIK, esp. for people w/ major astigmatism) and ground-based astronomy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_optics#Wavefront_sens...
That's really neat! I'm a beneficiary of this - with both nearsightedness and major astigmatism, I was told by the ophthalmologist that did my intake for LASIK that there was a non-trivial chance that the surgeon would decline to perform my operation (luckily he was in a confident mood). I went from completely non-functional without glasses to seeing 20/20 in one eye and 20/15 in the other.
While the benefits are diffuse, it's easily one of the top most impactful experiences in my life. It's akin to the feeling of successfully refactoring away a mountain of legacy tech debt that had been getting the job done but bogging you down. Getting rid of the tech debt feels great, but removing the cognitive load of even having to factor it into any decisions anymore just makes things more pleasant.
It's interesting to learn that, indirectly, I owe that to Regan's defense spending.
In-between, it is over 100km high up (ICBMs reach heights of >1000km. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercontinental_ballistic_mis...)
An ICBM also likely isn't going to be above my territory when the propellant drops. After that the tiny missile heads are going to be very hard to hit. That's why you need these laser systems in space (the "Star Wars" program) so you can hit them right after launch.
Lastly, the risk of "dropping radioactive waste" is far lower than the risk of having a nuclear warhead detonate at its target destination.
Countries do missile tests. Some of them do not announce them because they want to avoid embarrassment when it doesn’t launch or goes boom.
If you attack any launch that looks like an ICBM, you will attack those, too, certainly if you want to down it “right next to where it launched”, as that gives you a very short time to decide whether the missile is armed with nuclear explosives.
I think that what you say comes down to that you’re willing to risk war to deny countries of doing any ICBM missile test.
> I think that what you say comes down to that you’re willing to risk war to deny countries of doing any ICBM missile test.
"Accidentally" shooting down an unannounced ICBM out of precaution is not necessarily an act of war, nor will it necessarily lead to war.