HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. military is evaluating additional 50-kilowatt platforms as it seeks to buy short-range air defense laser weapons, even as the first four prototypes are deployed in the U.S. Central Command area of operations, an agency official told Defense News.
Three of the Army’s Air Defense Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range, or DE M-SHORAD, systems are in Iraq so the service can experiment with the capability in relevant operational environments. The fourth and final prototype will join the other three after some work is done, said Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch, director of the agency’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office.
“All four will be laying low supporting our soldiers in combat today,” he said. “What we’re giving up a little bit is our ability to learn how to integrate that ability into maneuver power, so we have some work to do on the back end. We are still collecting data. [the Army Test and Evaluation Command] they are at a disadvantage with us.”
In addition, the military will learn from two other 50-kilowatt laser platforms while the first platoon of prototypes is away, he explained.
The Army originally planned to complete the DE M-SHORAD prototyping effort and transfer it to the Executive Office Missiles and Space program in 2023. That office had planned to hold a competition for the registration program.
But Rasch’s office decided in 2022 that the directed energy effort needed more time to develop and instead planned for the fiscal year 2025 transfer.
The first prototypes consist of a 50-kilowatt Raytheon laser on a Stryker combat vehicle. Kord Technologies is the main integrator.
The two new 50-kilowatt platforms the Army will also evaluate when they arrive next year are an option from Washington-based nLight and another from Lockheed Martin, Rasch said. The designs are different, he added, so aspects such as beam quality, affordability and reliability are also expected to differ.
The Office of Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies now plans to spend about two years evaluating options before deciding on a path forward.
“We’ve got a couple of different plans, so we’re going to take the data from what we’ve already received, the data that we’re collecting from these other two systems and put it together to create for the senior leaders, probably late ’26, early ’27 time frame,” Rasch said.
“We want to maintain competition, so it doesn’t really help if we spend a lot of money and it’s almost unfair if we load the deck and transfer a program decision to, say, PEO Missiles and Space, and it’s really not a decision; you have a vendor that is viable,” Rasch said. “Competition makes everyone better.”
While this effort means he’s moving even more slowly, Rasch said he “would have loved to have done it all and had it be record projects, but we probably couldn’t afford it all anyway. So that gives us some time to really create a better competitive space for the affordability of the next phase.”
With DE M-SHORAD systems at reduced range, he added, the Army will learn about lethality and reliability.
“We’ve been testing them in labs for decades,” Rasch said. “Now we’re learning some new lessons about what happens when you put them into operation, when you put them in a really nasty, dirty environment that our soldiers put them in.”
The Army is investing about $100 million annually as it prepares to make a recommendation to Army leadership on a strategy, he noted.
His office is currently evaluating 10-, 20-, 50- and 300-kilowatt options for a wide variety of threats and missions. The 300-kilowatt laser is designed for the Indirect Fire Protection Capability, which is a system that will use kinetic, laser and high-powered microwave weapons to destroy threats such as rockets, artillery, mortars, drones and cruise missiles. The military is set to receive this laser weapon next year.
We’re not on all laser capabilities at once, but the agency plans to collect data on power, lethality, affordability and reliability in directed-energy weapons through a comprehensive test campaign to inform senior leaders, Rasch said.
The process will help the agency save money from a testing perspective and, through operational assessments with the user, capture enough data to help the Army identify the sweet spot for what it will take to counter threats in various environments , explained.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist who covers land warfare for Defense News. He has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
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