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I'm afraid most of the commentors here are missing the point. The airborne laser was not designed, nor would it be used, to take out tanks or any other minimally hardened targets. The use of a truck as a target, then putting out this video to the public, was kinda stupid on the part of BMDO. The airborne laser was designed to be used on ballistic missiles during the boost phase. To reduce weight on the missile (and allow a more robust, heavier payload) the skin of missiles is thinner than the sheet metal on a normal truck. It is used for aerodynamics only, not strength. And right below this thin sheet metal is a delicate warhead(s), or delicate guidance systems, or better yet, delicate parts of the propulsion system. A laser that can burn through the thin outer layer then into any of the aforementioned interior systems will keep the missile from accurately finishing it's intended arc, thereby ensuring a failed attack. The missile may in fact fall back onto the land area of the nation that fired the missile, or explode in flight. Luckily most of the missile scientists working for nations that would fire a missile at any US target (in CONUS, or US installations OCONUS) will see this video and understand that their missile PKs (probability of kill) just went down by a huge factor. That's pretty much all it's been built to do.

We conducted a similar experiment at UofW Agricultural Center, where we collected methane from the first stomach and used a small compressor powered by flexible solar panels (also attached to the cow) to compress and store the methane. Unfortunately a check valve in the system failed on one of the cows, and the pressure container had enough methane built up so that a large methane expulsion out the cow's rectum occurred. At the time, the cow was near an open flame, and the cow took off across the barnyard like a rocket. While the experiment was a complete failure in collecting usable methane, we did set the world land speed record (and got into the Guinness Book of World Records) for bovines.