Realistic Space Combat

For our ongoing thread regarding Mark's story:
	Here is an interesting article that is in my school newspaper. 
A LT
here has come up with a way to shrink the size of a 100 Million Volt
Electron Beam Laser to be able to fit onto a surface ship (as in blue
water).  The /existing/ prototype (minus the size reducing
improvement)is
capable of cutting through more than 100 feet of steel in a fraction of
a
second.  They want to use this to protect ships from missiles.	This
would
be a very effective weapon in space if the size reduction issues work
out....
	By the way the Campus Newspaper is an open source document, so
I'm
not giving anything away...
	Phil P.