What We Know About the Army’s New Enduring High Energy Laser Weapon
The new E-HEL effort signals a shift from experimental prototypes to field-ready firepower.
The US Army appears closer than ever to launching its first official directed energy program of record — a major milestone in the service’s decades-long quest to field battlefield-ready laser weapons.
Laser Wars was first to report in early July that the Army’s fiscal year 2026 budget request contained nearly $50 million in procurement dollars to buy a pair of so-called Enduring High Energy Laser (E-HEL) weapons. That revelation came on the heels of a damning Government Accountability Office (GAO) assessment of the service’s current 50 kilowatt Stryker-mounted Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) effort, all but confirming that the Army planned on ditching the much-hyped laser Stryker in favor of a brand new system entirely.
The Army’s budget documents and GAO report don’t provide any significant insight into what the new E-HEL system might actually look like. Luckily, a newly-released presentation published this past May from the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO), which oversees the service’s directed energy efforts, sheds new light on the new E-HEL push. (Thanks to to
for first spotting these slides.)DE M-SHORAD Is Effectively Over
Despite the Army’s insistence that its Stryker-mounted laser weapon has ushered in a new era of air defense, RCCTO appeared poised to move on from the system as recently as last year, when it affirmed in response to questions from U.S. defense contractors that it was actively pursuing E-HEL options that departed from the systems currently under contract through existing directed energy projects. Indeed, the DE M-SHORAD platform had reportedly struggled with the high power and cooling demands during recent operational testing in the Middle East, and that was even before the GAO report declared the system “not mature enough” to support a transition to a program of record.
The RCCTO presentation, prepared by provides an informative overview of the service’s current directed energy efforts, including the Palletized-High Energy Laser (P-HEL) that’s been watching over soldiers downrange in recent years, the Infantry Squad Vehicle-mounted Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL), and the Integrated Fires Protection Capability-High Power Microwave (IFPC-HPM) that recently earned a $43 million Army contract for defense tech startup Epirus. And while the slides say that RCCTO will “continue with additional [DE M-SHORAD] prototypes … in support of future acquisition activities,” all signs point to an unceremonious end for the service’s laser Stryker effort.
E-HEL Must Be Built to Last
Based on the RCCTO presentation, the Army appears to be approaching E-HEL as a true program of record: not an experimental demo, but a practical, maintainable, and upgradable weapon system meant to evolve with battlefield needs. As RCCTO officials emphasized in its 2024 industry responses, E-HEL “is focused on moving beyond prototyping to production ready systems.”
To that end, the E-HEL program is explicitly designed to “leverage first-generation design and sustainment lessons learned” from previous laser efforts like P-HEL, AMP-HEL, and DE M-SHORAD, according to the RCCTO presentation. That includes building for modularity, reliability, and maintenance — all areas where the DE M-SHORAD faced serious hurdles.
“We have to continue to work harder, we have to continue to work with the soldiers. We have to continue to work with industry to develop our directed-energy platforms and focus on the areas of reliability,” as RCCTO chief Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch put it at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama on Wednesday. “We’ve got to work on maintainability because … we can’t get by with the thought of having clean rooms out in combat.”
In system-level terms, this means the E-HEL effort is prioritizing several features that weren’t fully realized in earlier prototypes, including:
Automated aimpoint tracking that “improves lethality fluence and reduces tracking response time,” likely a lesson gleaned from the service’s experience with Blue Halo’s AI-assisted LOCUST Laser Weapon System.
A platform-agnostic design that supports both fixed and mobile deployments, although the service has said in the past it “prefers” a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle or similar class of vehicle as its chief mobile platform.
An open system architecture that allows for easy upgrades as better technology emerges, as well as a clear tech insertion roadmap.
Soldier-performable sustainment using line-replaceable units that can be quickly swapped out without requiring depot-level maintenance or specialized clean rooms.
The Army’s choice to untether E-HEL from a specific platform in particular echoes a broader US Defense Department shift toward adaptable weapon systems that can scale across missions with incremental upgrades rather than face wholesale replacement. In a budget environment where production runs are often limited and threats evolve faster than acquisition cycles, designing E-HEL for modularity could make the difference between a weapon that stays relevant for 20 years and one that’s obsolete in five.
“We have decoupled the vehicle from our lasers … if the Army wants to put it on a robot or a Stryker or a JLTV,” as Col. Adam Miller, RCCTO’s directed energy boss (and author of the May presentation), told Defense News at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium.
The Army Is Playing For Keeps
When it comes to the E-HEL effort, the Army appears full speed ahead. The service awarded a contract to shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) earlier this year to begin development of the E-HEL prototype, with a follow-on contract apparently set for later this year, according to budget documents. A previous RCCTO notice had indicated that the service plans on rapidly acquiring and fielding up to 20 E-HEL systems for frontline use.
The Army is expected to take delivery of its first E-HEL prototype by the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, with production units slated to begin delivery to the service by the end of fiscal year 2027. According to the RCCTO presentation, the procurement strategy includes the planned production of E-HEL systems, retrofit packages for existing platforms, and new vehicle integrations based on operational needs.
With barely two years between initial contracting with HII to expected production, the E-HEL timeline is aggressive by Army acquisition standards, underscoring both the urgency of the drone threat facing US troops overseas and the service’s growing confidence in laser weapon maturity. It also raises the stakes: after years of overpromising and underdelivering, E-HEL may be the Army’s last, best shot to prove laser weapons are actually ready for a fight.
The E-HEL program is still in its early stages, and much remains to be seen — especially when it comes to power levels, targeting performance, and how well the system handles the real-world complexity of drone and missile threats. But make no mistake: the Army is clearly trying to turn decades of directed energy R&D into a deployable, supportable weapon system. If it works, E-HEL could become the blueprint for how the Pentagon finally brings high-energy lasers out of the lab and onto the battlefield.
Check out the entire RCCTO presentation below:
The next logical step is to enter the valley of death and GAO shall find faults galore, there’s less skeletons in Hades than the valley of death.
The Trust Fund spice 💰will flow.
Perhaps allowing the GS guild such control was a mistake.
Decades? = Trust Fund.
50 kilowatts, wow. That's like the power of 35 hair dryers all at once. Input to the beam, right? Some of it will hit the target. It's sure going to be need to be hardened. Remind me, how many watts/cm2 is a supersonic missile dissipating already?