I was mainly working on what came before COIL, the quasi-continuous wave carbon monoxide electric discharge laser (CO-EDL). It was figured to have about 40% quantum efficiency, a number that I have not seen surpassed. But COIL operated at a shorter wavelength, and the Air Force was in love with shorter wavelengths. Now they are working with solid-state lasers. (Kind of like going full circle, considering the first lasers were ruby rods.)

Mainly, I am proud of the fact that my re-editing of the proposal won Boeing a $1billion development contract. We had a guaranteed loser before it was turned over to me.

After the system successfully shot down a boosting ballistic missile in flight in 2010, President Obama canceled the program and scrapped it. So, even if I wanted to point it at the Moon (why? nothing would happen), it is not there to do the job. It would have been a handy counter to the North Korean missile launches.