devices, (nicknamed "smart weapons") "allow one soldier to do the work of a company of soldiers, with far greater efficiency," he says. A soldier carrying a shoulder-mount laser can spot an enemy tank, gun, or some other position and radio to his own artillery unit that he is situated on a specific grid on the map and then call in a strike against the enemy's position. He points his laser at the enemy tank, and the artillery round from his own unit homes in and follows the laser beam right to the target.

A tank can do the same thing, using its own laser to guide, with pinpoint accuracy, the rounds that it fires. Jets have the same capacity for their rockets and bombs.

Yet, by far the most mind-bogglingof the military's plans for the laser lies in its newfound realization that lasers can be used to shoot objects out of the sky. Hughes Aircraft Company and TRW, a California electronics and engineering company, are reportedly working on a satellite that would detect a ballistic missile heading toward the United States and zap it before you could say "Soviet Union."

Once detected, a missile traveling at twice the speed of sound could, in theory, be neutralized by such a satellite before the missile had moved one inch farther. That's the easy part, in fact, since the laser beams travel at the speed of light. With computer-steered mirrors for aiming, the satellite could extinguish multiple targets within seconds.

Size would make it difficult to put such a weapon in space.