A high-powered laser aboard a modified Boeing Co 747 jumbo jet shot down an in-flight ballistic missile for the first time, highlighting a new class of ray guns best known from science fiction.

Richard Fisher finds a lot to worry about in China's recent test of exoatmospheric missile interception, arguing that the U.S. needs to take this "as a wake-up call that in the long term, China intends to challenge its strategic superiority in aerospace."

China said late Monday that it had successfully tested the nation’s first land-based missile defense system, announcing the news in a brief dispatch by Xinhua, the official news agency. “The test is defensive in nature and is not targeted at any country,” the item said.

The United States will test its core missile defenses for the first time in January against a simulated long-range Iranian attack, a top Pentagon official said on Monday, amid tensions with Tehran.

An in-depth history of the "Soviet Star Wars" program, that in 1987 attempted to launch an orbiting battlestation with an anti-satellite, sky-sweeping laser weapon, and a space-to-earth kinetic warhead system, but failed during launch due to a small programming error.

A U.S. missile defense system that is too robust could actually backfire and become destabilizing, prompting countries like China to expand their nuclear arsenals, according to U.S. Air Force General Kevin Chilton, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command.

The White House will shelve Bush administration plans to build a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, according to people familiar with the matter, a move likely to cheer Moscow and roil the security debate in Europe.

The Obama administration's proposal to emphasize battlefield missile defenses over systems for intercepting strategic ballistic missiles would save the nation money while potentially making it more vulnerable to future attack, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Top Pentagon officials have grown increasingly confident in the nation's missile defense system at a time when North Korea is threatening to conduct a long-range launch, leading to speculation of a possible showdown in the exosphere.

North Korea may be capable of hitting West Coast cities with its missiles within three years, according to Marine Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but is unlikely to be able to deliver a nuclear warhead in that time frame.