How about the 'Airborne l@ser' armed 747 ?, is that not a feasible option or is that still under development. Only the years we've seen it on TV together with the claims of what it could do seemed ideal, or is the flight duration too short to track/lock on and fire (not being pedantic just a ground crew individual who is not in the know )
Development on the 747 airborne laser was discontinued several years ago. I'm not clear on the why - it seemed to working reasonably well. At the time there were some sounds to the effect that new technology had made that particular setup obsolete - but if that was truly the case I would have thought there would have been some sort of new technology follow on (then again, maybe there is and we're just not being told about it).