Not the laser plane! While Secretary of Defense Robert Gates redirected the Pentagon budget away from old technologies, the media and some in congress focused on the cuts to some programs. Senator Joe Lieberman especially lamented the loss of the Airborne Laser plane, a prototype that stopped missiles before reaching boost capacity, despite Gates’ assessment of the utility of the plane as highly questionable and Stewart’s observation that it was really a flying piece of….well, that’s classified.

—Gabriela Resto-Montero

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