Washington DC may be the worst place in the United States to deploy a high-energy laser weapon. That may also make it the best.

The US Defense Department is considering deploying laser weapons to the nation’s capital amid concerns over unidentified drones probing the airspace above Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s residences at Fort McNair, the New York Times reported on March 31.1 A US Army spokesman confirmed the Times that it had increased its counter-drone activities in the area in response to the reported drone sightings “to keep our service members and civilians who work and live on Fort McNair safe,” although they did not confirm whether laser systems were part of that effort.

In isolation, this is a logical response. But coming just weeks after two separate laser-related aviation incidents along the US-Mexico border, it raises a more uncomfortable possibility: the American government may be introducing a far more complex risk into the most sensitive airspace in the country.

Deploying laser weapons over Washington may seem like a terrible idea. But it may also be a necessary step in forcing US government decision-makers to rethink how the America defends its own airspace.

On paper, the National Capital Region (NCR) – the geographic area that encompasses the District of Columbia and several counties in Maryland and Virginia established in 1952 to strengthen regional cooperation and coordination – isn’t the worst idea for a directed energy sandbox. The region’s integrated air defenses are in desperate need of an upgrade beyond its current “small number of professionals equipped with systems largely designed and bought in the 1970s and ’80s, with no defined path to modernization,” as former US Northern Command and NORAD boss Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck described it in 2024. One National Guard officer argued in June 2025 that the region’s fixed infrastructure and stable electrical grid also mean a laser emplacement wouldn’t struggle with the power generation issues plaguing forward deployed systems like the Army’s 50 kilowatt Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD), which officials previously acknowledged experienced “challenges” at various power levels during testing in the Middle East in 2024.

Unfortunately, the airspace over Washington is also an operational nightmare. The NCR represents some of the most densely trafficked, tightly managed, and politically sensitive airspace in the country.2 Every day, commercial aircraft descend into Ronald Reagan National Airport and Dulles International Airport, military helicopters shuttle officials across the region, and law enforcement and medevac aircraft must weave through a patchwork of restricted zones. The airspace only works (most of the time) because of a complex system of procedures, coordination, and constant communication between civilian and military authorities. The January 2025 collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that killed 67 people underscored how fragile that system really is. Civil and military aviation operate in close proximity, relying heavily on human coordination to stay deconflicted — but when that coordination breaks down, the consequences are immediate and catastrophic.

Now imagine introducing a new variable into that environment that operates at the speed of light, is invisible to the naked eye, and has no widely established rules for domestic use. That’s what a laser weapon deployment represents.

Alternatives to lasers exist, of course. Missiles and gun are tried-and-true countermeasures (albeit expensive and imprecise ones, respectively), and electronic warfare systems can render hostile drones inoperable. But those approaches also have limits in dense urban environments. Kinetic interceptors carry too much risk of collateral damage, and jamming threatens to interfere with civilian communications and navigation systems; meanwhile many small drones operate autonomously or on frequencies that are difficult to reliably disrupt. Even outside of laser weapons, there is no purely “safe” option, only different tradeoffs and the same questions surrounding airspace governance.

Existing airspace coordination systems were never designed to handle weapons like these at the scale required to effectively repel hostile drones. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has already raised concerns about deploying laser weapons in particular along the US-Mexico border, citing risks to aircraft safety — concerns the Pentagon has actively taken steps to alleviate. But those fears are even more pronounced in the context of the NCR, where the risk of a misdirected beam, an unexpected reflection, or even interference with aircraft sensors in such highly trafficked airspace isn’t just an operational and regulatory challenge, but a political one as well.

These high-stakes circumstances actually make the idea of a “laser dome” over Washington more significant than a local security measure — it becomes a national test case, a forcing function for how the US approaches air defense at home. And that’s a good thing: if the federal government wants to deploy any kind of persistent countermeasures, let alone exotic directed energy systems, to defend against drones domestically, it will first have to figure out how to integrate them into the most complex airspace it controls. That means developing new rules, new coordination mechanisms, and new lines of authority that can reconcile military necessity with civilian safety. There is no shortcut around that process — and there is no better (or, for that matter, unforgiving) place to do it than Washington.

The Pentagon’s interest in placing laser weapons at Fort McNair is an early test of whether the US can adapt its airspace governance to accommodate a new class of countermeasures for a new era of warfare. Solve airspace deconfliction in the NCR, and a model for domestic air defense begins to take shape, one that could potentially extend to critical infrastructure, logistics hubs, and major public events across the country. Fail in the NCR, however, and the case for deploying these systems nationwide becomes far harder to justify.

Washington isn’t just the hardest place in the US to deploy a laser: it’s the place where the consequences of getting it wrong would be impossible to ignore. And for a nation suddenly waking up to the drone threat’s arrival on American soil, there may be no better crucible for rethinking the national air defense enterprise than the airspace directly above the decision-makers responsible for it.

The US Navy spent at least six months resurrecting a high-energy laser weapon that previously graced the bow of a warship for a new military exercise last year, the service recently revealed.

The Navy’s Directed Energy Systems Integration Laboratory (DESIL) — the dedicated facility for evaluating laser weapons in a maritime environment located at Naval Base Ventura County in Point Mugu, California — “ramped up efforts to restore critical functions” to the service’s “one-of-a-kind” 150 kilowatt Solid State Laser Technology Maturation (SSL-TM) demonstrator starting in early March 2025, according to recently published ‘year in review’ bulletin from Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA).

Initiated in 2012 and officially known as the Laser Weapon System Demonstrator Mk 2 Mod 0, the SSL-TM demonstrator was originally installed aboard the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock USS Portland in 2019. The system, described as the successor to the 30 kw AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System (also known as the XN-1 LaWS) that was mounted on the Austin-class amphibious transport dock USS Ponce in 2014, was designed to “provide a new capability to the Fleet to address known capability gaps against asymmetric threats” like now-ubiquitous aerial drones and small boats laden with explosives, as well as “inform future acquisition strategies, system designs integration architectures, and fielding plans for laser weapon systems,” according to Navy budget documents.

The SSL-TM demonstrator appears to have performed as advertised. The system successfully destroyed a drone target during at-sea testing in the Gulf of Aden in May 2020 — an engagement that yielded one of the most vivid representations of a real-world laser weapon in action to date — as well as neutralized a small surface target during additional testing in December 2021.

But while prime contractor Northrop Grumman had specifically designed the SSL-TM demonstrator for installation “with minimal modification or additional costs” aboard the Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, the service initiated the system’s deinstallation from the Portland in fiscal year 2023 after spending nearly $50 million on the effort, the budget documents say. The US Defense Department’s final report on the initiative has not yet been made public.

Following the deinstallation, the SSL-TM demonstrator was presumably mothballed until the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)) requested the laser weapon “play a role” in the Pentagon’s new Crimson Dragon military exercise the following September, the NAVSEA bulletin says.

Described as a weeklong, multi-unit DESIL test event, Crimson Dragon convened 20 defense contractors “in a simulated combat environment” to test the effectiveness of their drones, counter-drone systems, and sensors “in scenarios that simulated military base defense, long-range fires and integrated [ballistic missile defense],” according to the bulletin.

The SSL-TM demonstrator successfully shot down four drone targets during the exercise, the bulletin says.

While it’s unclear which scenarios the SSL-TM demonstrator participated in during Crimson Dragon, an annual assessment of US military weapon systems from the Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test & Evaluation released on March 16 states that part of the exercise “focused on the sea point of departure defense venues against all-domain maritime air-and-sea threats,” which suggests the system may have provided air defense for a simulated port or staging area where troops and equipment embark onto ships.

But beyond these brief mentions in recent US military publications, no additional information is available regarding the current status of the SSL-TM demonstrator, its performance during Crimson Dragon, and the Navy’s future plans for the system. NAVSEA, OUSD(R&E), and the Office of Naval Research did not respond to requests for more details from Laser Wars.

Without more context, it’s difficult to infer where the return of the SSL-TM demonstrator fits into the US military’s expanding directed energy ambitions. The Pentagon has not indicated whether OUSD(R&E)’s request was driven by the urgency of real-world threats — the demonstrator was first tested in the very waters where Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen had spent more than a year targeting US warships and commercial shipping — or simply an opportunistic use of a capable system sitting in storage.

But the system’s restoration for Crimson Dragon potentially points to a broader challenge: despite years of testing and high-profile demonstrations, relatively few high-energy laser weapons are actually available for the kind of realistic, large-scale exercises needed to refine tactics and validate how these weapons are used in combat.

Indeed, it’s not like the Pentagon has bunch of spare laser weapons floating around to play with. The US Army’s four 50 kw Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) systems have been completely demilitarized, while the service’s Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) systems are preoccupied downing drones on the US-Mexico border. The Marine Corps returned its five Compact Laser Weapon System (CLaWS) to Boeing. The Navy’s AN/SEQ-4 Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy (ODIN) laser weapons are all installed aboard active warships at sea; meanwhile, the service’s 60 kw High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system has had a challenging year on its own. As a result, it appears that previously retired prototypes that might otherwise remain museum pieces are being called back into service to keep the US military’s counter-drone experimentation moving forward.

The Pentagon may be racing to field laser weapons at scale, but for now it’s still relying on yesterday’s prototypes to figure out how they’ll actually fight tomorrow’s wars.

⚡️Pulse

Updates from around the directed energy ecosystem

• AV’s newest laser weapon will soon be “forward deployed”: Virginia-based defense contractor AV unveiled a more compact version of its tried-and-true 20 kw LOCUST laser weapon, dubbed the X3, at the AUSA Global Force symposium in Alabama, with AV president for directed energy John Garrity telling Defense Daily that the company has already received production orders for the new system and expects to see the first units “forward deployed” in the coming months. “The earlier versions of LOCUST were developed and fielded, and we put them in the hands of soldiers, we got a lot of feedback from them on improvements that they’d like, different enhancements, and we took all that feedback and X3 is the result of that,” AV senior director of business development Aaron Westman told Breaking Defense.

  

• The UK Royal Navy’s Dragonfire laser weapon is still on schedule: In response to UK Member of Parliament James Cartlidge, Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard stated that the Royal Navy was still on track to field its 50 kilowatt DragonFire laser weapon on a Type 45 destroyer by 2027 as planned. The system is being delivered “through a new approach to procurement aimed at accelerating delivery timescales and providing the Royal Navy with novel capability sooner,” Pollard wrote. “This approach focuses on delivering a minimum deployable capability that can be further developed and enhanced over time.”

• China showcases two new laser weapons: China’s People’s Liberation Army showed off two new laser weapons, Guangjian (or “Light Arrow”) models 11E and 21A, in a March 26 report broadcast on state-run CCTV. While Guangjian-21A is a traditional high-energy laser weapon designed to burn hostile drones out of the sky, Guangjian-11E is described as a “multi-mode composite terminal jamming system” — essentially a laser dazzler designed to blind electro-optical sensors in order to neutralize incoming targets. As Laser Wars previously reported, state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) first unveiled the Guangjian family of laser systems at the Zhuhai Airshow in November 2024.

  

Editor’s note: This post has been updated.

After decades of research and development, high-energy laser weapons have finally become an operational reality.

The US…

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One of the most distinctive features of the US military’s high-energy laser weapon of choice isn’t the system itself — it’s how operators control it.

In a 60 Minutes segment on military laser weapons that aired on March 15, CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl traveled to Albuquerque, New Mexico for an up-close look at defense contractor AV’s 20 kilowatt LOCUST Laser Weapons System, which has been watching over US service members abroad (and triggering occasional airspace shutdowns near the US-Mexico border at home) in recent years. With Iranian Shaheds now pummeling the Middle East and the US Defense Department racing to field inexpensive countermeasures to address the ever-expanding threat of low-cost weaponized drones, Stahl explores the advantages (and limits) of laser weapons and how they fit into the evolution of modern warfare.

But my favorite part of the 60 Minutes segment is when Stahl takes a LOCUST for a spin and discovers that the futuristic laser weapon is operated with a tried-and-true Xbox controller, an interface AV bills as “a natural fit to today’s warfighter.”

For years, US service members have relied on Xbox controllers to operate everything from small unmanned systems like airborne drones, explosive ordnance disposal robots, and experimental ground vehicles to larger assets like the US Army’s M1075 Palletized Loading System logistics vehicle, remote controlled weapon stations, and even the photonics mast that has replaced the traditional periscope on the US Navy’s new Virginia-class submarines. The logic of embracing the handset simple: if the vast majority of Americans grow up playing video games and even continue playing into adulthood, why not adopt a control system that capitalizes on US troops’ pre-service experience and reduce the training timelines for advanced weapons systems?

“The gaming companies spent millions of dollars developing an optimal, intuitive, easy-to-learn user interface, and then they went and spent years training up the user base for the US military on how to use that interface,” as military technologist Peter Singer previously old me of the Pentagon’s Xbox fixation. “These designs aren’t happenstance, and the same pool they’re pulling from for their customer base, the military is pulling from … and the training is basically already done.”

Xbox controllers and high-energy laser weapons in particular appear to be a match made in heaven, and not just with LOCUST. More than a decade ago, the beam director on the US Army’s truck-mounted 10 kw High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD) was operated using an Xbox handset. Today, so is the 10 kw High-Energy Laser Weapon System (HELWS) from Raytheon that both the US and UK militaries have tested in recent years, according to a 2018 video published to the US military’s Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS). So too is Boeing’s 5 kw Compact Laser Weapon System (CLaWS) that the US Marine Corps began evaluating in 2019. And at the 2026 Singapore Airshow defense exposition in early February, American laser company IPG Photonics showed off its new Crossbow Mini — a 3 to 8 kilowatt laser weapon billed as a compact air defense option for US and allied forces — alongside a similarly styled Xbox controller.1

Even laser weapons that don’t use Xbox’s proprietary controllers themselves still rely on their familiar ergonomics. As I previously reported,2 the US military has its own ruggedized handset, the Freedom of Movement Control Unit (FMCU), that’s based on the tried-and-true dual-grip video game controller and used to operate several advanced weapon systems, including the Navy’s 30 kw AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System (also known as the XN-1 LaWS) that was previously installed aboard the Austin-class amphibious transport dock USS Ponce, the US Air Force’s laser-equipped Recovery of Air Bases Denied by Ordnance (RADBO) truck, and the US Marine Corps’ Humvee-mounted High Energy Laser-Expeditionary (HELEX) demonstrator.

While Xbox-style controllers may make laser weapons easier and more intuitive to operate, they don’t solve a larger problem facing the US military: with the rapid proliferation of autonomous weapons systems across the modern battlefield, combat now occurs at machine speed, with tactical decisions unfolding in mere seconds — and sometimes milliseconds. By the time a human operator can visually confirm a target, slew a controller’s joystick, fine-tune their aim, and fire off a laser beam, the engagement window may already have closed. The “human weapon system” can be just as much a bottleneck to swift and decisive action as the design of a human-machine interface.

Video game controllers have lowered the training barrier, but it’s artificial intelligence that may prove decisive in squeezing every last iota of “lethality” out of laser weapons. With the right computer vision and machine learning software, an AI-powered weapon system can ostensibly identify and track targets faster and, with the appropriate control surfaces, more precisely than even the most skilled US service member3 can muster manipulating a physical joystick — precision that’s essential for laser weapons that must maintain a stable beam on a single weak spot for several seconds to inflict catastrophic damage. Indeed, AV’s LOCUST system relies on its AI-enabled “Wisard” acquisition, tracking, and pointing software to lock on to fast-moving threats with uncanny precision to purportedly deliver maximum damage in minimal time.4 The result, company executives previously told me, is a 20 kw laser weapon that can deliver effects equivalent to a 100 kw system without piling on additional power.

AI is slowly creeping into other military laser weapons. As of February 2025, the Navy was actively working to integrate AI into the Marine Corps HELEX demonstrator ahead of live-fire testing. The Pentagon has been testing the autonomous Archimedes Laser Sentinel developed by startup Aurelius Systems for the last year. And this logic extends beyond the US military: Israeli defense firm Rafael plans on adding AI to its operational ‘Iron Beam’ laser air defense system so operators can shoot down drones with enough precision to at least somewhat control the disabled target’s descent, according to company CEO and President Yoav Tourgeman

“For example, if it’s an airplane and you cut the right wing, [it will] flip over and come to the right. If you cut the left wing, you will fall to the left. You have a kind of a control where, how to intercept it, where you will be landing,” Tourgeman told Breaking Defense at the Association of the US Army annual expo in October 2025. “You understand that there is room [for] the system to learn and improve itself. And now we have the capability of every target, to work on several interception methods that will give different results.”

The argument for marrying AI and laser weapons is persuasive: when engaging small, fast-moving drones, especially in swarms, maintaining a lasers’s dwell time is a punishing task, and algorithms ostensibly don’t get tired or distracted and let their aim slip in scenarios where even a instant off target can break an engagement. In that sense, the Xbox controller may ultimately become less a tool of direct control and more a supervisory interface, an intuitive way for a human operator to authorize or abort decisions already generated by software.

The Xbox controller makes laser weapons easy to operate for generations of US service members who grew up on video games. But as AI enables these systems to move at the speed of the threat, the big question is how long humans will remain in the loop at all.

The US Army hasn’t even officially taken delivery of its most powerful high-energy laser weapon yet, but the service is already walking away from it in pursuit of a newer model.

In a new Congressional Research Service (CRS) report published on March 9, Army officials revealed that the service no longer plans on transitioning its 300 kilowatt Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) system, dubbed “Valkyrie,” to a program of record after years in development, effectively ending its current effort to build a laser weapon powerful enough to defend US troops against cruise missiles as well as drones and munitions.

As recently as this past January, Army had planned to transition the truck-mounted IFPC-HEL — developed as a successor to the 100 kw High Energy Laser Tactical Vehicle Demonstrator (HEL-TVD) and earlier 10 kw High Energy Laser Mobile Test Truck (HELMTT) — to a program of record in fiscal year 2025 following successful testing. The service had previously awarded Lockheed Martin an Other Transaction Authority agreement worth up to $220.8 million in July 2023 to develop four IFPC-HEL prototypes following the September 2022 delivery of a 300 kw demonstrator under the US Defense Department’s High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative (HELSI).

But according to the new CRS report, Army officials said the IFPC-HEL contract has since been reduced to a single prototype, which is currently undergoing “final lab testing” at a Lockheed facility in New Jersey ahead of subsequent developmental testing at the service’s Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah this summer. According to officials, that prototype won’t end up in the service’s hands until at least September, after which it will “be divested as a fielding candidate and used to inform the Joint Laser Warfighting System,” the CRS report says.

“Joint Laser Warfighting System” in this context likely means the Pentagon’s Joint Laser Weapon System (JLWS), a new collaboration between the Army and US Navy initiated “in support of DoD’s overarching Golden Dome for America strategy” to develop a laser weapon to “provide an Air Defense capability against cruise missile threats,” according to the Army’s fiscal year 2026 budget request.

The JLWS “represents the next step in the evolution of counter-cruise missile laser weapons,” the budget documents say. (The Army did not respond to a request for comment from Laser Wars.)

While the Pentagon is accelerating the development and fielding of laser weapons at scale across the US military primarily in response to the ever-expanding threat of low-cost weaponized drones, fast and maneuverable land-attack cruise missiles remain one of the most persistent and dangerous threats facing US and allied forces abroad, from Russian strikes on critical infrastructure in Ukraine to Iranian-supplied weapons used across the Middle East. This danger looms over the homeland as well: the US Defense Intelligence Agency stated in 2025 that cruise missiles launched from Russian aircraft or Chinese naval assets represent a significant gap in America’s current domestic missile defenses.

Laser weapons like those envisioned for IFPC-HEL may struggle in a counter-cruise missile role. Unlike most drones, cruise missiles are designed to survive significant atmospheric friction as they speed towards their targets, often with hardened nose cones and reinforced casings that require sustained energy to defeat. Because cruise missiles move at hundreds of miles an hour, maintaining a stable beam on a single vulnerable point over an extended range for several seconds in order to inflict catastrophic damage is significant challenge. Even small disruptions in target tracking or beam quality can break the engagement, limiting the effectiveness of even the most powerful existing systems.

One possible solution to this problem lies in pulsed laser technology, which delivers energy in high-intensity femtosecond-long bursts rather than a sustained beam like the popular continuous wave systems. By concentrating energy into these ultra-short pulses, these systems can achieve higher peak power and potentially damage or disrupt targets without requiring prolonged dwell time on a single point.

IFPC-HEL wasn’t the US military’s only counter-cruise missile efforts in the works. The Navy is still pursuing its 300 kw High Energy Laser Counter-ASCM Program (HELCAP), while the Office of Naval Research is exploring an even more powerful 400 kw system through its SONBGOW project. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s HELSI initiative is targeting megawatt-class lasers capable of engaging not just cruise missiles, but ballistic and hypersonic threats, with the department awarding nLight a contract in 2023 to develop a suitable system over three years. According to a recent report in Aviation Week, nLight is “on track” to demonstrate that system for defense officials this year, with a successful outcome likely solidifying potential plans to incorporate laser weapons into the Golden Dome’s layered defense architecture.

It’s unclear from the CRS report why the Army chose to abandon IFPC-HEL. But the decision mirrors its earlier move to drop the Stryker-mounted 50 kw Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) laser weapon in favor of the upcoming Enduring High Energy Laser system, which may become the service’s first official directed energy program of record. In that case, hands-on soldier assessments conducted in the Middle East in 2024 revealed that “results from the lab environment and test ranges were very different from the tactical environment,” according to a separate CRS update published March 10. If a 50 kw system designed for drones like DE M-SHOARD struggles to perform outside of controlled conditions, scaling that technology up to 300 kw cruise missile defense may prove even more challenging.

The need for laser weapons capable of countering cruise missiles is clear, and the political and institutional will to develop them appears strong. But if the Army’s decision to move on from IFPC-HEL is any indication, the technology may not yet be ready for one of the most demanding missions in modern air defense.

⚡️Pulse

Updates from around the directed energy ecosystem

• A moment of truth for the Pentagon’s megawatt-class laser weapon efforts: In an excellent feature for Aviation Week, Steven Trimble examines the US military’s progress in developing megawatt-class laser weapons capable of defending against high-end threats beyond drones since establishing HELSI in 2018, including some detail on Lockheed Martin and nLight’s distinct approaches to the engineering challenge.

• The US Navy is considering containerized laser weapons: Speaking at a McAleese Defense Programs conference in Arlington, Virginia on March 17, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle laid out his vision for modular, containerized weapons and other payloads that can be swapped across existing ships without major integration or overhaul processes, as Defense Scoop described it. And those potential payloads include high-energy laser weapons, Caudle said: “From towed array sensors to drone swarms to electronic attack systems to high-powered lasers, I want to containerize everything.” Coincidentally, Lockheed Martin is developing a containerized version of its High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) weapon system.

• Japan completes shipboard laser weapon trials: Japan has completed a series of shipboard laser weapon trials aboard the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) experimental testbed ship JS Asuka and “will now begin work on a new prototype,” Janes reports. For more background on Japan’s naval laser weapon efforts, read this Laser Wars entry from December 2025.

Editor’s note: This post has been updated

If the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter is generally considered an absolute death machine bristling with machine guns and missiles, then only one thing could make it even more fearsome: a high-energy laser weapon.

Defense contractor Elbit Systems revealed on March 17 that the company had secured a contract from the Israel Ministry of Defense in 2025 for not only an airborne version of the combat-proven 100 kilowatt ‘Iron Beam’ laser weapon for fixed-wing aircraft, but a separate system designed for helicopters as well dubbed ‘Sting.’

While Elbit didn’t identify which aircraft are under consideration to host these notional laser weapons, CEO Bezhalel Machlis told Israeli business outlet Calcalist that the systems would end up outfitting “fighter jets and combat helicopters,” indicating a likely focus on the Israeli Air Force’s growing Apache fleet rather than, say, its UH-60 Black Hawk or CH-53 Sea Stallion squadrons. That said, an Elbit sizzle reel on the new systems screened at an investor conference on March 17 presented a notional system as contained within and fired from the body of a helicopter, which might suggest a potential UH-60 integration. 1

Israel isn’t the first country to actively explore the development of a laser-equipped helicopter. In June 2017, a US Army Apache outfitted with a specialized Raytheon laser weapon pod successfully engaged targets during testing at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, the first publicly known helicopter-based firing of a high-energy laser in history.

Initiated in 2015 under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between US Special Operations Command and Raytheon, the “Laser Apache” initiative was designed to “explore the effects of rotor wash on laser weapon systems,” a SOCOM spokesperson told Laser Wars in an email.

“There is absolutely a niche I believe for [the] use of directed energy weapons,” then-SOCOM rotary wing project manager Army Col. John Vannoy told reporters in May 2016. “The lens we are looking at this through right now is: ‘Is it feasible to do this?’ We’re not at the point where we’ve laid out a business case to advance it … We really want to understand the environment on the wing, the beam quality we can get off the wing, and the ability to beam steer and keep power on a target.”

The ultimate goal of the initiative was to determine if directed energy could provide an inexpensive alternative to conventional munitions against certain targets, according to Vannoy.

“The vision is not destroying tanks with lasers,” he said. “If you imagine the timeframe for expending light energy against softer targets, whatever that may be – I’m not discussing units here; I’m talking about vehicles, maybe generators, those kinds of structures – vice sending a missile, which can be very costly, maybe $150,000, you just start devising … a business case.”

The 2017 test at White Sands “achieved all primary and secondary goals, providing solid experimental evidence for the feasibility of high resolution, multi-band targeting sensor performance and beam propagation supportive of High Energy Laser capability for the rotary-wing attack mission,” Raytheon said in a statement at the time. “The design of future HEL systems will be shaped by the data collected on the impact of vibration, dust and rotor downwash on HEL beam control and steering.”

But it appears the results weren’t promising enough for the US Defense Department to pursue further development of the Laser Apache: the CRADA concluded in 2017, the SOCOM spokesperson said, and neither the Pentagon or Raytheon have publicly mentioned the project since. (When reached by Laser Wars, a Raytheon spokesperson was unable to provide details regarding the fate of the laser weapon pod.)

All of this leads me to wonder: Is integrating a laser weapon with a military helicopter actually a good idea?

On paper, the appeal is obvious: a laser-equipped helicopter could potentially engage both aerial and ground targets with a virtually unlimited magazine and minimal cost per shot. Against drones, light vehicles, or exposed equipment, this combination offers a compelling alternative to AGM-114 Hellfire missiles or 30mm cannon fire, especially in scenarios where resupply is constrained or collateral damage is a concern.

In practice, helicopters may prove one of the most challenging platforms imaginable for laser weapons. Unlike ground vehicles or warships, which can draw on relatively stable platforms and significant onboard power, rotary-wing aircraft are defined by constant vibration, limited power margins, and complex airflow generated by rotor wash, not to mention the atmospheric turbulence associated with high-speed aerial operations. These factors can drastically degrade beam quality, complicate targeting, and reduce effective range, all while competing with other critical systems for power and thermal management capacity. This is likely why SOCOM and Raytheon didn’t pursue the Laser Apache concept further: they quickly discovered the very conditions that make helicopters so effective in combat may also make them uniquely hostile to laser weapon performance.

This doesn’t mean the concept is doomed, but it does suggest that Elbit has some serious physics challenges ahead for making their notional system work under real-world conditions. If the company does manage to succeed, however, then the venerable Apache may eventually count laser weapons as part of its arsenal — and that’s objectively metal as hell.

⚡️Pulse

Updates from around the directed energy ecosystem

• Inside a ‘first of its kind’ counter-drone laser test in the American desert: My former Military.com colleague Drew Lawrence, now reporting for DefenseScoop, has details from the US military’s March 11 test of the Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) system at White Sands. The test was primarily undertaken to reassure the Federal Aviation Administration that the domestic use of AMP-HEL, which shut down airspace in Texas twice in February, poses no real threat to commercial air traffic. From the article:

  [Joint Interagency Task Force 401 deputy director Army Col. Scott McLellan] said the evaluation involved “localized” firing of the AMP-HEL from various distances at the fuselage of a Boeing 767 airliner that testers lugged on to White Sands to assess the system’s damaging effects, “or lack thereof” on aircraft material. He said it aimed to “disprove some myths” about the capability, noting “that energy clearly dissipates over time and space and doesn’t have the effect everyone thinks it does as far as lasers are concerned.”
  

  A JIATF 401 spokesperson said the laser was fired at its “maximum effective range for up to 8 seconds” at the grounded fuselage, “demonstrating that even at full intensity, the laser caused no structural damage to the aircraft.”

  Read Drew’s entire story at Defense Scoop here and watch newly released footage of the AMP-HEL system downing multiple drones during the test below:

• RIP DE M-SHORAD: The Pentagon’s annual assessment of weapons systems for fiscal year 2025 from the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation, published on March 16, confirms that the Army is “no longer pursuing” the 50 kilowatt Styker-mounted Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) system as its chief laser weapon. The service will instead apply lessons learned to its nascent Enduring High Energy Laser (E-HEL) initiative, which is “expected” to eventually become the service’s first program of record.

• Laser rifles on guard aboard the USS Nimitz: A new photo published to the Pentagons’ Defense Visual Information Distribution System (DVIDS) shows a US sailor standing watch with a LA-9/P laser dazzler on the catwalk of the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in San Diego on March 10 — which, given the rise of drone warfare and the specter of a potential domestic strike looming over critical infrastructure and capital assets, makes total sense:

  

For decades, the US military’s dream of high-energy laser weapons has been perpetually “five years away.” Now the Pentagon says it wants to finally make them an operational reality within the next three.

Speaking on a panel at the National Defense Industrial Association’s annual Pacific Operational Science and Technology conference in Honolulu, Hawaii on March 9, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies Michael Dodd stated that the US Defense Department plans on fielding directed energy weapons such as lasers and high-powered microwaves at scale within the next 36 months to defend US service members from the threat of hostile drones, National Defense magazine reports.

While the Pentagon has deployed a handful of laser weapons overseas in recent years for operational testing and officially designated “scaled directed energy” as a critical technology area in November, this accelerated push for widespread fielding comes as US forces engaged in the Operation Epic Fury struggle to counter waves of Iranian Shahed drones raining down across the Middle East, according to fellow panelist Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering James Mazol.

“We need to be able to deal with mass, and we need to be able to defeat mass that’s coming at us,” Mazol said, per National Defense.

These ambitions appear to have support at the highest levels of the US government. Speaking at a White House press conference on Epic Fury on March 9, President Donald Trump touted the potential of laser weapons as a cheaper alternative to the pricey interceptor missiles US forces currently rely on to counter drones and other aerial threats.

“The laser technology that we have now is incredible,” Trump, who previously declared laser weapons a key feature of his proposed ‘Trump-class’ battleship, said. “It’s coming out pretty soon. Where literally lasers will do the work of, at a lot less cost, what the Patriots are doing and what other things are doing.”

That cost difference is at the heart of the Pentagon’s growing interest in directed energy. A single Patriot PAC-3 interceptor can cost more than $3 million, while the Iranian Shahed drones pummeling battlefields across the Middle East often runs between $20,000 and $50,000 — a punishing asymmetry for conventional militaries. Directed energy weapons like high-energy lasers promise to invert this equation, with each shot requiring little more than the electricity required to generate the beam. And while laser weapons have clear limitations, they offer a potentially attractive complement to traditional missiles and other kinetic interceptors for countering the threat of low-cost weaponized drones.

This Pentagon-level push to field directed energy weapons comes as the military services have also accelerated their own laser programs. Senior US Navy leaders recently trumpeted their vision of “a laser on every ship” in the surface fleet, a notable shift from the caution that previously defined the service’s approach to directed energy. The US Army has laid out draft requirements to “produce and rapidly field” up to 24 new Enduring High Energy Laser (E-HEL) systems in what might finally become the service’s first program of record. The Air Force is taking another run at both airborne laser weapons and ground-based systems for base defense after years of disappointment. The Marine Corps says it plans on investing in a “more deliberate program of record” for laser weapons, as a service spokesman previously told Laser Wars. The Army and Navy are even teaming up on a brand new laser weapon system as part of Trump’s ambition ‘Golden Dome for America’ missile shield. All of this is occurring against the backdrop of $250 million infusion of funding for directed energy research and development included in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” reconciliation package the president signed into law in July 2025.

Taken together, these efforts may represent the Pentagon’s most serious attempt to transition laser weapons from experimental prototypes to routine military capabilities since President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983. But while the R&D breakthroughs required for the orbital laser weapons envisioned by Reagan’s “Star Wars” never materialized, the technology has now advanced to the point where they are burning drones out of the sky in active conflict zones — and, occasionally, at home. Adaptive optics, more efficient power systems, improved thermal management, and AI-assisted targeting have now converged to make laser weapons reliable and compact enough for real-world operations.

Transitioning laser weapons into fully funded military programs is as much a matter of institutional will as technological maturity. Many next-generation defense technologies end up languishing in the “valley of death” between R&D and acquisition because of shifting priorities or a lack of political support from stakeholders in the Pentagon or Congress; just look at the Navy’s experience with its electromagnetic railgun, which the service abandoned in 2021 after spending nearly $1 billion over two decades. With senior military leaders, service secretaries, and the commander-in-chief extolling the virtues of laser weapons, the chances of these systems actually watching over combat formations downrange have rarely been higher.

The most significant challenge facing the Pentagon’s scaled directed energy ambitions is the “scale” part. As Laser Wars previously reported, the essential components of laser weapons require rare earth elements and other critical minerals, the global production and processing of which China dominates. And even if those inputs were abundant, advanced manufacturing capacity is not: US defense contractors like AV and nLight, as well as Australia’s Electro Optic Systems (EOS), have all announced plans to boost production of laser weapons in recent months, but those manufacturing expansions will take months to ramp up and outputs will likely remain modest at perhaps a handful of systems a year (five to 10 annually at EOS’s new hub in Singapore, for example). This pales in comparison to, say, the hundreds of FIM-91 Stinger missiles and Coyote interceptors that defense prime Raytheon can churn out in the same period. Scaling laser weapons from prototypes to scores of systems will require a defense industrial base that largely does not yet exist.

Scaled directed energy is not a standalone solution for the US military’s air defense woes. Laser weapons, after all, aren’t magic: they can be extremely effective against drones and other targets, but they still require precious seconds of dwell time to inflict catastrophic damage and their performance can degrade depending on atmospheric conditions. This makes them best suited as one segment of a broader layered air defense architecture rather than a wholesale replacement for missiles and guns. In practice, this means pairing lasers with kinetic interceptors, electronic warfare systems, and other specialized countermeasures, all coordinated through a unified command-and-control system that can assign the right weapon to the right target at the right moment. Lasers and other exotic directed energy systems may help solve the cost problem posed by drone attacks, but only by working as part of a larger air defense ecosystem designed to handle the full spectrum of aerial threats.

After decades of laser weapons promises, the Pentagon has given itself a deadline. Now it has to prove that it can deliver — fast.

⚡️Pulse

There’s officially more laser news than I have time to devote individual editions to! To ensure Laser Wars remains up to date, I’m experimenting with a new section to capture updates from around the directed energy ecosystem:

• No, Israel isn’t using the Iron Beam in the war with Iran: Despite viral footage purporting to show Israel’s chief laser weapon swatting down Hezbollah rockets in the opening weeks of the US-led war with Iran, the Israeli Defense Forces confirmed to the Jerusalem Post on March 12 that the Iron Beam “has not been used by Israel and is not ready for regular use during the current war.” Given that Semafor first reported on March 14 that Israel is “running critically low on ballistic missile interceptors,” perhaps Iron Beam will make an appearance on the battlefield so the IDF can preserve its kinetic arsenal for higher-end threats.

• Laser Wars in the New York Times: I’m quoted in a new article from New York Times reporter Farah Stockman about military laser weapons and Operation Epic Fury, mostly dumping on the New York Post for misidentifying an AN/SEQ-4 Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy (ODIN) system photographed on the USS Spruance as the 60 kilowatt High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS). I’m grateful Stockman for her time and her editors for keeping this line:

• Here comes another laser rifle: Laser technology company NUBURU announced on March 9 that subsidiary Lyocon has “completed the proof of concept” of a “portable directed-energy laser dazzler platform” — in other words, a laser rifle. While the US military has fielded handheld laser dazzlers for years, the new drone countermeasure joins a wave of similar systems from France, Russia, Indonesia, and Belarus released over the last year.

• The US Navy’s electromagnetic railgun is back from the dead: The Navy resumed testing of its electromagnetic railgun in February 2025 at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, according to a ‘year in review’ publication from Naval Sea Systems Command released in January. The service had previously abandoned its railgun efforts in 2021 due to “fiscal constraints, combat system integration challenges and the prospective technology maturation of other weapon concepts” — a decision I had predicted back in 2017. Needless to say, I’m amped to see what comes next for my beloved supergun.

  

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Editor’s note: This another brief digression under this newsletter’s stated mission to cover not just lasers, but other futuristic defense technology. Have feedback? Drop me a line.

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