air support
to defend something as slow and un-manouverable as a 747, especially if it needs time to line up a shot then there needs to be something that can a) take out or jam enemy weapon systems, whether they are ground to air missiles or fighter jets trying to ram a missile up his tailpipe... it's not going to be hard for the bad guys to find one of these, jumbo's aren't exactly the most stealthy of aircraft, and if they are annoyed enough to launch an icbm they aren't going to sit there and not attack the plane sent to stop them. anyone sending u a fighter to defend has to think of tanker support, crew rotations etc, a fighter only has limited loiter time even with external tanks.
loads of authors have used airobrne lasers in novels, the only one who thought about this is one guy who set the carrier aircraft as a b52, more range and capacity than most other planes plus they were designed to carry bombs, but with a few tweaks they can have fun little toys like air to air missiles... the US government has tons of these to spare so why not? sounds like fun to me..
Biting the hand that feeds IT
