out by skeptical physicists at Los Alamos National Laboratory suggested there was no lasing going on at all. Other concepts, like the neutral beam weapon, demonstrated performance that was so poor it was unlikely it could ever work. The best among them all was the Space Based Laser, but it needed to improve its beam quality by at least 100 times before it would be able to disable an ICBM. That same year, the American Physical Society (APS) published their review of the directed-energy weapon efforts. After a lengthy declassification procedure, it was released to the public in March 1987. Compiled by a veritable Who's Who in the laser and physics community, including a Nobel laureate, the lengthy report stated in no uncertain terms that none of the concepts were remotely ready for use. In every case, performance had to be improved at least a hundred times, and for some of the concepts, as much as a million times. It concluded that at least another decade of work was required before they would even know if any of the systems could ever reach the necessary performance. Strategic Defense System In a sudden reversal, in late 1986 Abrahamson and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger agreed to proceed with a deployment option for a system that was for all intents and purposes an updated version of Smart Rocks. Named "Strategic Defense System, Phase I", or SDS for short, the concept added a ground-based interceptor that would be located in the United States, along with a host of radars and high- and low-orbit sensor satellites, all netted together with a command and control system. They briefed Reagan on the concept on 17 December 1986, and by mid-1987 had a proposal ready for review by the Defense Acquisition Board (DAB). The system immediately faced withering criticism. As before, the newly christened "garage satellites" would be open to attack by anti-satellite weapons, destroying all of the missiles within them. Although this concern had been raised before, the proponents still had no answer to this problem. But now the system added more critical elements, especially the high-orbit sensor satellites which not only had to survive, but had to be able to transmit their information at high speed to the interceptors. Disrupting any one of these many systems could render the system useless. The $40 billion budget estimate was dismissed as "pure fantasy". Over the next year