Well, first off, I wouldn't trust anything you see on Fox and Fiends, er, Friends, because they are (1) mere mouthpieces for the Republican Party and Bush Administration and (2) a sleazy news organization.
Note that the invention is dated 1989, presumably at the height of the SDI ("Star Wars" program promulgated by the Ronald Reagan / Bush, Sr. duo.
I'm also skeptical that a real invention having to do with national defense would be declassified and published on the Internet. It has an air of plausibility, but would an army of DOD patent lawyers make the grammatical error of saying "comprised of" instead of "comprising"? Well, OK, maybe they would.
In any case, the system described (as best I can make out) is based on beaming phased high-power electromagnetic radiation
into space from multiple ground-based antennas in order to create high-energy electrons to distinguish radiation signatures of armed vs. decoy missiles. It doesn't sound like something you point at a roomful of possible terrorists to find the bad guys with their suitcase bombs.
Effects on the atmosphere? They're the Department of Defense: what do they care?
