For the benefit of Airfix fans...

Israel was actually looking into a centrally located huge laser cannon in the late 1980's/early 1990's that would fire its beam pretty much horizontally into a series of steerable mirrors located in various parts of the country, which then would reflect and focus it onto incoming missile and aircraft targets.

Germany's Luftwaffe vastly outnumbered the RAF; but the "Chain Home" radar system allowed the RAF to take them on effectively, and win. The proof is in the pudding. Saying it was a "close-fought thing" is completely accurate; but the key point is that Britain won the battle, and Germany lost it. This isn't a theoretical discussion regarding tactics and defense spending; this is what actually happened. Britain spent far less money on the RAF than Germany did on the Luftwaffe, yet when push came to shove, Britain's RAF proved completely effective to dealing with the threat the Luftwaffe posed.

We gave Britain the Thor IRBM system, and the Polaris SLBM. You know what we should have given Britain? The same thing we gave Canada; Bomarc SAMs with nuclear warheads. Around six Bomarc batteries could have defended the airspace over the whole British Isles.

You put the gizmo down in a hole in the ground, fire the beam up into a mirror around 1,000 feet above it, reflect it from there into the focusing mirrors and fry the targets from them. Actually, masers would work better than lasers for this, because the atmospheric conditions wouldn't degrade the beam.

Pat

I had the Frog kit and that's what it looked like. It was a trial to get the decals to settle over those protuberances. ;)

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Oh yeah, Scottish separatists with a laser cannon; London's going to go for that. ;-)

Pat

I never could figure out how both the British and Russians could get counter-rotating props to work, but all of ours used to flop.

Pat

James May's Top Ten Toys programme segment - Airfix.

Meet the box top artist