The US military uses laser weapons in combat

TThe U.S. military has invested tens of billions of dollars in the research and development of directed energy weapons over half a century. Now it actually uses them in battle.

The military has used lasers to shoot down enemy drones in the Middle East, Army acquisitions chief Doug Bush recently said Forbes. It is the first time that the Ministry of Defense has acknowledged that such weapons have been used in combat.

“In some cases they have worked,” Bush said. “Under the right conditions, they are very effective against certain threats.”

He declined to give details of the weapons used, but it appears they involve a system called P-HEL. It is based on defense contractor BlueHalo’s Locust laser, a boxy pallet-mounted device for fixed-site defense that is controlled with an Xbox game controller. The weapon is designed to fire a relatively low-power 20-kilowatt laser beam that will melt a critical point on a drone in seconds and knock it out of the sky.

In November 2022, the Army began deploying the first P-HEL overseas, and BlueHalo said a second unit was deployed this year, making it the first “large laser weapon system” to be deployed operationally, CEO Jonathan Moneymaker said. Forbes. But it has never confirmed its use in combat before.

Moneymaker said P-HEL has had a “significant” number of successful engagements where it has burned drones out of the sky. “Not in the onesies, twosies,” he said.

It’s a milestone for the Pentagon, which is struggling with the costs of unmanned aerial combat, where the price of defense often far exceeds that of attack. U.S. air defense missiles cost roughly twice as much as offensive missiles, and the disparity is even greater with the cheap drones that have proliferated in the Middle East and in the war between Russia and Ukraine. In the Red Sea, US warships defending cargo ships from attacks by Yemen’s Houthi militants have used $2 million worth of missiles to shoot down $2,000 worth of drones over the past six months.

So-called directed energy weapons such as lasers and high-powered microwave systems, which use electromagnetic radiation to fry the electrical components of their targets, are much cheaper. According to a 2023 GAO report, their costs per withdrawal range between $1 and $10 for the diesel fuel needed to generate the electricity that powers them.

Another advantage of laser weapons: stealth. The beams are usually invisible and silent. Proponents of an effort to test a laser on an AC-130 Air Force special operations gunship touted the prospect of being able to disable vehicle engines and communications equipment without the enemy knowing. (The program was canceled this spring after years of delays.)

Small drones are an easier target for the emerging technology compared to missiles and manned fighter aircraft because they are relatively slow and fly at low altitudes.

But laser weapon systems are expensive to build. The first P-HEL prototypes cost $8 million each, the Army said Forbes; prototypes of a vehicle-mounted system with a more powerful 50 kW laser, called THE M-SHORAD, cost $73 million. That’s an expensive investment considering the many expensive modernization programs competing for the Pentagon’s $825 billion budget.

“It’s very difficult for the military to afford a directed energy system that costs as much as an F-35,” said Bush, who hopes prices will drop to a quarter of the average $82.5 million price tag for the stealth fighter jet.

The current generation of laser prototypes also faces questions about their effectiveness. Lasers are hindered by sandstorms, rain, fog and smoke. Even on a clear day, air turbulence can blur and weaken focus. And they must stay focused on a point on a target for several seconds, raising questions about whether a single laser can handle swarms of drones.

But proponents say laser-versus-drone systems don’t have to work in all conditions to be worthwhile.

Bad weather also detracts from the effectiveness of the weapons designed to combat them, notes Thomas Karr, who was the inaugural director of a Pentagon office set up between 2018 and 2020 to coordinate targeted energy research. also fly very well in a sandstorm.”

Bush said lasers would be just one part of a multi-layered counter-UAS system, including kinetic interceptors such as missiles or RTX’s Coyote kamikaze drone ($120,000 each) and weapons-based weapons such as C-RAM.

“If it saved 10% to 20% of the interceptors we would otherwise have to fire, that’s still a very good return on investment,” he said.

Star Wars dreams

The promise of directed energy weapons has lured the Pentagon since the 1960s, but was partially thwarted for decades by overly ambitious projects like the Reagan-era Space Defense Initiative. Derided as Star Wars until its cancellation in 1993, roughly $30 billion was spent developing a system that involved space-based lasers to blow up fast-moving Soviet ballistic missiles from thousands of miles away.

Another prominent failed attempt to blow up ICBMs: the $5 billion Airborne Laser program, billed as America’s first lightsaber, which was phased out in 2012. Researchers grappled with size and weight issues when mounting a megawatt-class laser powered by bulky containers of hazardous chemicals on a 747 airliner.

By 2010, research had refocused on the much less ambitious goal of hitting smaller targets such as artillery shells and the emerging threat of slow-moving drones from just a few kilometers away or less.

“The technology doesn’t have to perform at this very stressful level and you don’t need as much power and accuracy,” Karr said.

According to a GAO report, the Pentagon has been spending roughly $1 billion a year on targeted energy research since 2020.

“In the 2020s,” a number of systems were deployed to military units for field testing and are available for use by commanders, said Frank Peterkin, the Department of Defense’s chief director of directed energy.

That includes four DE M-SHORADs, which feature a laser made by RTX, mounted on a Stryker armored troop carrier. They were sent to Iraq this spring for field testing. (One focus is on how well the lasers withstand the shock and vibration as they are moved.)

Since 2019, the Navy has installed a 30 kW laser “dazzler” called ODIN on eight destroyers; it is designed to disrupt the optical or infrared sensors of enemy drones. In 2022, the Navy deployed a 60 kW laser made by Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin
called HELIOS on another destroyer, the Preble, which can destroy drones and outboard motors on small boats.

But these weapons have been notably absent from the fighting in the Red Sea, where they could be effective against some Houthi weapons, Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, head of the Navy’s surface forces, said in January. He called the slow pace of progress in deploying laser weapons “frustrating.”

Fry guys

Powerful microwave weapons are not hampered by the weather, but usually have a shorter range. Southern California startup Epirus has delivered four prototypes of its Leonidas system to the military under a $66 million contract. Epirus co-founder and CEO Any Lowery shared Forbes it can create ‘a wall’ of energy hundreds of meters beyond a base’s perimeter to take down multiple drones simultaneously, functioning as the last line in a layered air defense, like a ‘hockey goalie’.

It takes six of these systems to defend an average airport, Lowery said. The four prototypes each cost $13 million, the Army said.

Lowery says Leonidas performed better than he expected last month during Army tests at the China Lake weapons range in California. They include tests of soldiers’ ability to quickly repair the system, and defeating attacks from a range of drones.

Lowery is hopeful that Leonidas will soon move on to deployment abroad and that Epirus could win the holy grail for arms makers in 2027: the transition to a “program of record” with a budget line for buying Leonidas units in large numbers.

That could line up with the military’s timeline on directed energy weapons. Bush said the agency is currently preparing budget plans for the 2026-2030 period, exploring “how we can actually get procurement for these things.”

Meanwhile, the Defense Department is funding work on more powerful lasers, including 300 kW systems from companies like Lockheed Martin, General Atomics and nLight, which could tackle larger, faster targets such as cruise missiles. Ministry of Defense energy czar Peterkin said the hope is that these will be ready for testing with field units within five years.

The US is also investing in an intriguing Israeli effort. The military aid package for Israel that Congress passed last month includes $1.2 billion to finance Iron Beam development. Israeli defense contractor Rafael’s 100 kW laser is designed to defeat missiles and drones. Israel hopes to put it into practice by the end of next year, and the Pentagon could be interested in it as an alternative to the systems it is developing, Bush told reporters last year.

If the Pentagon decides to put one of the current laser prototypes into widespread use, it could take a while for defense contractors to move to mass production. Only a handful of companies make key components such as optics, the Emerging Technologies Institute, a defense industry think tank, warned in January. It blamed the Defense Department for “wavering in its commitment” to the technology and failing to send a clear demand signal to the industry to invest to prepare.

Bush said it’s more a matter of limited congressional funding and multiple pressing priorities.

“Everything is in competition with everything else,” Bush said. “But what could turn the tide is that the threat is serious. And if we show that these systems can work against the current threats we face in the Middle East, it could move the conversation in the Pentagon.”