Laser is line of sight, limiting your range. And nature has a great way of jamming lasers, called clouds. If you were able to get a decently powered laser in a satellite, it wouldn't be able to control too many aircraft unless it looked like a porcupine. And then it would have to deal with anti-satellite defenses that both China and Russia have spent significant sums on.

> Laser is line of sight, limiting your range.

Yes, with current equipment it limits your range to somewhere beyond the orbit of the moon. Yes, we can now keep a laser and a receiver tracked on each other from 300000km away.

> And nature has a great way of jamming lasers, called clouds.

There are wavelengths that are not hampered much by clouds.

> If you were able to get a decently powered laser in a satellite

We can.

> it wouldn't be able to control too many aircraft unless it looked like a porcupine.

... but this is a problem, you'd basically be limited in total bandwidth by count of satellites. Meaning you either need to launch a lot of them, or reduce bandwidth per drone.

Being able to ping the moon with a laser doesn't help with terrestrial systems. Just as radar has a horizon limit, so do laser systems. So if you put this on a controller version of an AWACS, you have to deal with attenuation from clouds/weather, and I think keeping a lock on a maneuvering UCAS might be a challenge.

I'm not talking about pinging the moon, I'm talking about maintaining a link with a maneuvering spacecraft in moon orbit.

So this spacecraft you're linking to makes radical 8g maneuvers, changes direction at a 30s/ roll rate, and can change altitude at will?