Thanks to Daniel Dupont , editor, Inside the Army and Inside the Pentagon .
Nobody knows what's going on out there.
Army officials and other sources, however, confirm the laser's ability to track and destroy satellites continues to improve with those experiments, while documents obtained by Inside the Army indicate they relate directly to the October 1997 test. In an emergency, it's the only thing we've got right now. John Pike, a space analyst with the Federation of American Scientists who is familiar with fiscal year 1998 laser activities, concurs. According to several dozen documents detailing a series of laser experiments in fiscal year 1998, the work in question primarily involves improvements made to a beam directing system that operates in tandem with the Mid-Infrared Chemical Laser, the most potent of all Defense Department lasers and one of the largest in the world. But the controversy surrounding last year's test has changed everything.