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.
