Best Thing Ever (Yet): Laser Cannon Dreadnought

Well, probably not. It still makes for a pretty awesome story, even if it is just the usual defense-contractor "just pretend you want to do this so what you've been planning to do the whole time will seem more reasonable" proposal. And it really does make a lot of sense. The first really effective laser cannon will be huge and power-hungry, so it makes a lot of sense to put it on a destroyer that has a) plenty of room and b) megawatts of power to spare. That actually makes so much sense that I'm really starting to wonder who first had the idea to mount the thing in an airplane.