Meet The Lasers That Eat Drones For Breakfast

Star Wars is not just a movie anymore, as laser weapons begin to trickle into the U.S. military.

Recent Pentagon-awarded contracts could be worth as much as $847 million and are painting a clear picture of the future laser weapons that will defend U.S. troops from drone threats across the globe. The winners of the new contracts are nLIGHT Defense and Lockheed Martin Aculight, which will be responsible for developing and manufacturing the new laser-based weaponry.

Lockheed Martin Aculight and nLIGHT Defense primarily manufacture solid-state lasers (SSL) for military purposes. SSLs are high-energy laser beams that burn through their targets.

“This is going to, I think, continue to shape warfare, and it is a place where we must make proper investments with companies that are ready to move at speed to provide advantages for America and allies,” Nathan Diller, the President and Chief Strategy Officer of aerospace and defense manufacturer Mach Industries, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “You certainly can imagine significant kinetic effects that come from laser weapons, and many of those are things that are out in the public from the military. I mean a variety of different uses for lasers in a military application.”

Current conflicts like the Russo-Ukrainian War and the Iran War have proven that drones are changing the future of warfare both on the battlefield and in long-range attacks.

The U.S. is not alone in the development of this technology. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems released a video of an Israeli laser system intercepting drones in combat on X.

The Pentagon announced the new contracts would have an initial award value of $86 million in a press release on Thursday. However, the $847 million figure is the maximum amount of funding that could be allocated to the program.

“It is the next logical step toward operationalizing directed energy technologies that are now mature enough to transition from science projects to America’s warfighters. There is an old saying about directed energy weapons: they are always five years away from fielding,” Mark Gunzinger, the director of Future Concepts and Capability Assessments at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told the DCNF. “That is no longer true! Advances in high-power solid-state lasers with improved power sources, beam combination technologies to increase output power, and component ruggedization to operate in the field has been rapid, and the need for cost-effective lasers to counter drones and other threats is immediate.”

The Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering promoted the new contracts in a post on LinkedIn containing a promotional image that appears to feature a Stryker armored fighting vehicle equipped with experimental laser weaponry.

The DOW referred the DCNF to its Thursday press release.

But there are limitations to the technology, Diller said.

“Some of the limitations are going to be more around things like power. Energy storage, and this is the reason I think movement of power across the battle space is so essential,” Diller told the DCNF. “Then you go look at some of our war games that we play, the ability to manage the logistics of energy and do it in a very agile approach is essential.”

Diller said that he was excited about these new technological developments because many of them are dual-use, meaning they can make life better for civilians while developing new technologies. One great example of a dual-use technology is the liquid-fueled rocket, which was largely developed and popularized by Nazi Germany, but eventually became the backbone of the global satellite system that supports the internet in the modern age.

“I guess another reason for enthusiasm for my part is that the development of technologies that allow that agile energy movement that enable some very interesting weapons are also things that create a very resilient infrastructure for the United States,” Diller told the DCNF.

The technological aspects of the program will be managed by the Department of War’s (DOW) Scaled Directed Energy (SCADE) Critical Technology Area (CTA). The financial management of the program will be managed by the Joint Laser Weapon System (JLWS) Other Transaction Authority (OTA), according to the Pentagon press release.

To meet immediate operational needs, the first JLWS prototypes will generate about 150 kilowatts, while later versions are expected to reach 300 to 500 kilowatts for more effective cruise missile defense, according to the Pentagon press release.

A 500-kilowatt laser would be comparable to the power draw of roughly 500 microwave ovens operating simultaneously. Average microwave ovens range from 600 watts to 1 kilowatt, according to EnergySage.

“150-kilowatt systems will be effective against small and medium-size drones, as well as rockets, artillery and mortar rounds, small boat systems, and even some theater ballistic missiles. 500 kilowatts have long been considered a threshold for countering cruise missiles, although lower-power lasers could be effective against them depending on their shot geometry,” Gunzinger told the DCNF. “For instance, a 150-kilowatt-class laser could be highly effective against a cruise missile if it can be used to burn through the missile’s relatively thin skin instead of its hardened nose cone.”

The real challenge the U.S. military is facing is the large-scale manufacturing and production of these systems, which require extensive resources.

“I believe the barrier is now more a question of available resources than tech maturity. Of course, laser technologies must and will continue to improve, but their maturity is no longer as challenging a barrier,” Gunzinger told the DCNF. “Yes, additional reductions in SSL sizes, weights, and power density are still needed to field systems that can be carried by smaller aircraft like a fighter, but those technologies are maturing rapidly as well.”

Although these new defenses will be beneficial in the defense against drones, Gunzinger said that drone swarms may still be able to overwhelm the new laser systems through attacks with massive numbers of small drones.

“Ideally, you would pair lasers with another form of directed energy weapons—like high power microwave defenses—and lower-cost kinetic defenses like Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) missiles,” Gunzinger told the DCNF. “That’s a key to understanding effective counter-swarm defenses: a combination of non-kinetic and kinetic systems is needed, lasers by themselves will not be a ‘silver bullet’ defense.”

In 2020, the U.S. Navy released a video of the USS Portland disabling a UAV with a laser beam, the LWSD Mk 2 Mod 0 on DVIDS.

“I think you know you certainly could go build a laser that would cut a drone in half. I mean, you’ve got a variety of industrial uses for high-power lasers right now that that can do interesting things like that,” Diller told the DCNF. “You know, I think the important part to remember is being deliberate about lethality and survivability. And so, from a lethality perspective, how do I think about dollar per effect?”

One of the biggest problems in the ongoing Iran War is the difference in cost between Iranian offensive munitions and U.S. defensive munitions.

“Lasers won’t supplant kinetic interceptors like Patriot missiles anytime soon, but they will help flip the cost-exchange ratio to our advantage. Both kinetic and non-kinetic defenses are needed to counter today’s threats,” Gunzinger told the DCNF. “Our military and our allies simply cannot afford to continue using multimillion-dollar missiles to shoot down cheap drones and other threats that cost a fraction of the cost of a Patriot missile or an AMRAMM [Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile].”

A current PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptor, the newest Patriot missile variant, costs roughly $5 million per round, according to the DOW Fiscal 2027 budget estimates. Meanwhile, a Shahed-136 one-way attack drone is generally estimated to cost $20,000 to $50,000, with about $35,000 per drone commonly used as a working estimate, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies Missile Defense Project.

“But there’s there’s a lot of other non-kinetic effects that you could do with directed energy capabilities, or even kind of a transition into electronic warfare capabilities that potentially will have the same effect at much lower price per effect,” Diller told the DCNF.

Like everything in warfare, the cost versus effect must be considered.

“So could you go build a Death Star to blow holes in things? Absolutely. We’ll stick that thing in low Earth orbit and fire away,” Diller said. “The challenge is again doing proper trade space analytics that do that at the right cost per effect, and then the other thing is a recognition that you know there could be a case where I don’t have that high power infrastructure, or there’s a counter to that high power infrastructure”

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