America’s Allies Are Going All In On Laser Weapons
Amid the surging threat from weaponized drones, at least 5 US allies are pushing to deploy new laser weapons.
As the world barrels into the holiday season, several militaries are already unwrapping some futuristic gifts.
Since the end of October, at least five United States allies have either unveiled new laser weapons or announced major milestones in the development of laser systems designed to counter the growing threat posed by unmanned aerial vehicles — a significant spike in the development of such weapons that, until recently, seemed out of reach to military and defense planners.
On October 28, the Israeli Defense Ministry announced that its 100 kilowatt “Iron Beam” laser weapon system will be integrated into its existing air defense system “within a year,” according to Defense News. The Israeli government had previously moved to accelerate the development of the Iron Beam in response to recent drone and missile attacks, with the US pledging $1.2 billion to support the effort back in April.
On November 9, Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force unveiled a 10 kw laser weapon system mounted on an 8x8 truck chassis, dubbed the “Vehicle-Mounted High-Power Laser Demonstration Device,” during the land warfare branch’s 70th anniversary celebration. While the system is still technically a prototype, the reveal represents a major step forward for the Japanese military’s ongoing push to outfit ground vehicles with laser countermeasures to protect military installations, airfields, and other critical assets from small drones and certain missiles.
On December 9, the Republic of Korea Armed Forces announced that it had officially deployed a stationary 20 kw laser weapon known as the Laser-Based Anti-Aircraft Weapon Block-I to “frontline units and selected urban locations” like the capital of Seoul, per Army Recognition. Purportedly capable of disabling incoming drones at ranges of up to 3 kilometers, South Korea previously announced mass production of the system back in July to counter the growing threat posed by North Korean drone incursions.
On December 11, the British Army announced that it had successfully neutralized drone targets with defense giant Raytheon’’s High-Energy Laser Weapon System (HELWS) mounted on a Wolfhound troop carrier during live-fire testing. The test came months after the defense ministry pledged to accelerate the fielding of its 50 kw DragonFire laser weapon system aboard Royal Navy warships by as soon as 2027
On December 16, the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s drone chief, Col. Vadym Sukharevsky, declared that the country now possesses a laser weapon of unspecified power called the Tryzub ("trident) capable of taking out airborne targets “at an altitude of over 2 [kilometers],” according to Interfax. While the system is still undergoing testing, Sukharevsky emphasized that his newly formed drone branch was pushing forward scaling up the system to counter the seemingly never-ending stream of Russian drone attacks .
When it comes to the development and deployment of operational laser weapons, the US military continues to lead the charge. In April, the Army confirmed that it had officially deployed at least two 20 kw Palletized High Energy Laser (P-HEL) weapons based on defense contractor BlueHalo’s LOCUST Laser Weapon System to provide air defense support for soldiers in an “undisclosed location” abroad – which, given the rise of drone attacks on US troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan and Navy warships in the Red Sea, is likely somewhere in the Middle East. Army acquisition chief Doug Bush even told Forbes that these weapons had proven “highly effective against certain threats,” indicating that the Army had likely achieved the first-ever laser kill in the history of modern warfare.
(It’s worth noting that official confirmation of a laser kill remains elusive. In the process of reporting my story for Military.com, the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, which oversees the service’s directed-energy portfolio, declined to confirm whether the P-HEL had achieved such a kill, citing operational security concerns. Indeed, a follow-up report from Forbes indicated that, despite Bush’s comments, nobody in the service will officially confirm his statement on the record.)
While the US military has been slowly but surely fielding laser weapons like the Army’s Stryker-mounted 50 kw Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) and the Navy’s shipboard 60 kw High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) systems over the last few years, the timing of its successful P-HEL deployment couldn't have been better. At the moment, the US military and its allies are hamstrung in the Middle East and elsewhere, forced to use million-dollar missiles to down comparatively cheap, easilyweaponizable commercial drones – a cost curve that is absolutely unsustainable in the long term. And with conventional militaries (including the US) working overtime to adopt and field their own cheap attritable drones after watching their success on battlefields from the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the need for low-cost countermeasures like lasers will only increase.
The US military's operational deployment of laser weapons for air defense represents the culmination of decades of research and development focused on making the science-fiction “death ray” a reality. While the technology is far from perfect – the Air Force recently scrapped two separate efforts to mount lasers on aircraft like the F-15 Eagle and AC-130J Ghostrider gunship due to technical challenges, as I recently reported for Military.com – engineering advances have finally transformed the prospect of a lightweight laser weapons from futuristic dream to tangible engineering reality at a moment in time where demand for such systems in military and defense circles is surging.
As I wrote for Wired back in May, the US has unleashed the age of the laser weapon upon the modern battlefield – and with more and more countries pursuing high-energy lasers to fight off incoming drones, there’s no going back.
Editing by Justin Miller.