With powerful systems you never know whether they are going to save you or evaporate you. Funny shit like this doesn't get funding unless there are military options to it I'd wager.

Have you met geeks?

> sufficient warning

Well, yes, quite. Wouldn't we be better off making sure we can reliably find them first?

> Wouldn't we be better off making sure we can reliably find them first?

People are already are working on that. For example, there's the NEOWISE project[0], which used the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer to look for potentially dangerous astroids. And there is a ongoing effort for a new space mission, NEOCAM[1], specifically designed to do this same thing and find more objects.

[0] http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/programs/neowise.html

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_Object_Camera

They propose additions use cases for the array in their papers. These include a LIDAR based detection system. I'm on my phone right now so I can't link the appropriate one. Let me know if you are interested and I can find it later.