U.S. Military Is Using Laser Weapons In Battle

The United States military has invested tens of billions of dollars over a half-century in the research and development of directed energy weapons. Now, it’s actually using them in battle.

The Army has used lasers to take down hostile drones in the Middle East, Doug Bush, the Army’s head of acquisitions, recently told Forbes. It’s the first time the Defense Department has acknowledged that such weapons have been used in combat.

“They've worked in some cases,” Bush said. “In the right conditions they're highly effective against certain threats.”

He declined to detail the weapons used, but one appears to be a system called P-HEL. It’s based on the defense contractor BlueHalo’s Locust laser, a boxy pallet-mounted device for fixed-site defense that’s commanded with an Xbox gaming controller. The weapon is designed to discharge a relatively low-powered 20-kilowatt laser beam that melts a critical point on a drone in seconds, knocking it from the sky.

In November 2022, the Army began using the first P-HEL overseas, with a second unit deployed this year, according to BlueHalo, making it the first “major laser weapon system” to be operationally deployed, CEO Jonathan Moneymaker told Forbes. But it has never before confirmed its use in battle.

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

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

So-called directed energy weapons like lasers and high-powered microwave systems, which use electromagnetic radiation to fry the electric components of their targets, are vastly cheaper. Their cost per shot ranges between $1 to $10 for the diesel fuel needed to generate the electricity that powers them, according to a 2023 GAO report.

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

Small drones are an easier target for the nascent technology compared to missiles and manned warplanes since they’re relatively slow and fly at low altitudes.

But laser weapon systems are expensive to build. The first P-HEL prototypes cost $8 million apiece, the Army told Forbes; prototypes of a vehicle-mounted system with a more powerful 50-KW laser called DE M-SHORAD have cost $73 million. That’s a pricey investment given the many expensive modernization programs competing for the Pentagon’s $825 billion budget.

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

The current generation of laser prototypes also face questions about their effectiveness. Lasers are hampered by sandstorms, rain, fog and smoke. Even on a clear day, air turbulence can defocus and weaken them. And they need to remain focused on a point on a target for several seconds, raising questions over whether a single laser can deal with swarms of drones.

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

Bad weather also degrades the effectiveness of the weapons that they’re meant to counter, notes Thomas Karr, who was the inaugural director of a Pentagon office set up to coordinate directed energy research from 2018 to 2020. “The incoming drone isn't going to fly very well in a sandstorm either.”

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

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

Star Wars Dreams

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

Another prominent failed attempt to blast ICBMs: the $5 billion Airborne Laser program, billed as America’s first lightsaber, which was wound down in 2012. Researchers struggled with size and weight problems in 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 like artillery shells and the emerging threat of slow-moving drones from just a couple of miles away or less.

“The technology does not have to perform at this very stressing level and you don't need as much power, you don't need as much accuracy,” said Karr.

The Pentagon has been spending roughly a billion dollars a year on directed energy research since 2020, according to a GAO report.

“In the low 20s” number of systems have been deployed with military units for field testing and are available for commanders to use, said Frank Peterkin, the DoD’s principal director for directed energy.

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

Since 2019 the Navy has installed a low-powered laser “dazzler” called ODIN on eight destroyers; it’s designed to disrupt the optical or infrared sensors on enemy drones. In 2022 the Navy fielded a 60-KW laser made by Lockheed Martin Lockheed Martin called HELIOS on another destroyer, the Preble, that’s capable of destroying 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 Admiral Brendan McLane, the head of naval surface forces, said in January. He called the slow pace of progress in fielding laser weapons “frustrating.”

Fry Guys

High-powered microwave weapons aren’t hampered by weather, but they tend to have a shorter range. The Southern California startup Epirus will soon deliver the final two of four prototypes of its Leonidas system ordered by the Army under a $66 million contract. Epirus CEO Any Lowery told Forbes it can throw up “a wall” of energy hundreds of yards out from 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 would take six of the systems to defend an average airfield, Lowery said. The four prototypes have cost $13 million apiece, Army said.

Lowery says Leonidas performed better than he expected in Army trials last month at the China Lake weapons range in California. They included tests of soldiers’ abilities to quickly repair the system, as well as defeating attacks by a range of drones.

Lowery is hopeful that Leonidas will advance soon to an overseas field deployment and that by 2027 Epirus could win the holy grail for weapons makers: transition to a “program of record” with a budget line for buying Leonidas units in large numbers.

That could track with the Army's timeline on directed energy weapons. Bush said the service is currently preparing budget plans for the 2026-30 timeframe in which they’re examining “how we could actually get to procurement on these things.”

Meanwhile, the DoD is funding work on more powerful lasers, including 300-KW systems from companies including Lockheed Martin, General Atomics and nLight that could take on larger, faster targets like cruise missiles. DoD directed energy czar Peterkin said the hope is that those will be ready for testing with field units within five years.

The U.S. is also investing in an intriguing Israeli effort. The military aid package for Israel that Congress passed last month includes $1.2 billion to fund development of Iron Beam. The 100-KW laser from Israeli defense contractor Rafael is designed to defeat rockets and drones. Israel hopes to field it by the end of next year, and the Pentagon could be interested in it as an alternative to the systems it’s developing, Bush told reporters last year.

If the Pentagon decides to field any of the current laser prototypes at scale, it could take a while for defense contractors to build up to mass manufacturing. Only a handful of companies make key components like optics, the Emerging Technologies Institute, a defense industry association think tank, warned in January. It faulted the Defense Department for having “wavered in its commitment” to the technology and failing to send a clear demand signal to industry to invest to get ready.

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

“Everything’s competing with everything else,” said Bush. “But what could move the dial is the threat is serious. And if we show that these systems can work against the current threats we're facing in the Middle East, it could move the conversation in the Pentagon.”