The US Military Officially Wants Laser Weapons For Its ‘Golden Dome’ Missile Shield
A new Joint Laser Weapon System is in the works to defend the US against cruise missile threats.
More than 40 years ago after President Ronald Reagan promised Americans a space-based laser shield straight out of “Star Wars” to end the era of nuclear brinkmanship, the United States is finally getting its directed energy missile defense — sort of.
The Trump administration’s plan to bolster the US homeland missile defense system, known as the “Golden Dome for America,” will officially involve high-energy laser weapons, according to newly released US Defense Department budget documents. But instead of a constellation of satellites armed with chemical lasers and particle beams like Reagan’s original Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) envisioned, the Pentagon plans on developing a ground-based laser system as an added layer of protection against incoming cruise missiles – a more modest but perhaps more achievable goal.
The US Army’s fiscal year 2026 budget request states that the $113 billion “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” reconciliation bill currently advancing through the House and Senate contains $51 million in funding for what’s dubbed the "Joint Laser Weapon System” (JLWS), a new joint initiative with the US Navy to develop a high-energy laser weapon to “provide an Air Defense capability against cruise missile threats.”
The JLWS “represents the next step in the evolution of counter-cruise missile laser weapons,” the documents state, with the effort initiated “in support of DoD’s overarching Golden Dome for America strategy.”
While the Golden Dome is generally seen as more focused on ballistic and hypersonic threats, the US Defense Intelligence Agency noted earlier this year that fast and maneuverable land-attack cruise missiles launched by Russian aircraft or Chinese naval assets represent a significant gap in existing American missile defenses, a vulnerability US officials have long warned could be exploited in a future near-peer conflict.
Details regarding the JLWS are scarce, but the budget documents offer a few hints at the Defense Department’s plans for the notional system.
Development of the JLWS is slated to begin in fiscal year 2026 under the Army’s Expanded Mission Area Missile (EMAM) program, the documents say. The EMAM program also encompasses several other innovative air defense efforts, including the Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) initiative which previously sought to equip the service with a platoon of 300 kilowatt laser weapon systems to defeat incoming cruise missiles and other aerial threats.
The Army’s prior work on the IFPC-HEL initiative will “inform” the JLWS, according to the documents. The service requested only $16.4 million for IFPC-HEL in fiscal year 2026, down from $19.5 million the previous year and $59 million the year before that due to the effort’s progression from hardware purchase, systems integration, testing and delivery to contractor logistics support, the documents say.
Separately the Navy requested in $46 million in R&D funds through its Surface Navy Laser Weapon System (SNLWS) program – which manages work on the service’s shipboard High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) – for JLWS-related work. This includes development of a new Joint Beam Control System (JBCS), lethality modeling, and integrated tracking and targeting capabilities, according to budget documents.
The emphasis on beam control is worth noting: these systems are essential for stabilizing and precisely directing a laser beam over long distances, especially against fast, low-flying targets like cruise missiles.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order just one week after taking office for the second time in January directing the Defense Department to pursue the development of a “next-generation missile defense shield” to protect the United States against current and future missile threats. Originally dubbed the “Iron Dome for America” in a nod to the tried-and-true Israeli air defense system, the system was renamed the “Golden Dome for America” a month later.
After evaluating a slew of proposed technologies, Trump announced in May that he had selected a system architecture that will employ “next-generation technologies across land, sea and space, including space-based sensors and interceptors” for a price tag of roughly $175 billion across three years.
The reconciliation bill contains more than $24 billion in funding for integrated air and missile defense as part of the Golden Dome initiative, including $250 million for “the development and testing and directed energy capabilities” by the Defense Department’s Undersecretary for Research and Engineering, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report on the legislation.
Apart from $5 million in R&D funding that the Pentagon explicitly requested to “accelerate the start” of the JLWS initiative, it’s unclear how much of that larger defense-wide directed energy budget is focused on the new system.
Unlike small drones or rocket, artillery, and mortar fire, cruise missiles pose a significantly complex challenge for high-energy laser systems. Flying low to the ground at high subsonic speeds, often hugging terrain and executing evasive maneuvers, cruise missiles are designed to exploit radar blind spots and evade traditional interceptors, drastically reducing the reaction time available to detect, track, and engage them — an especially acute challenge for laser weapons that require several seconds of stable dwell time to burn through its target. In addition, cruise missiles often feature hardened casings and internal shielding to protect against both kinetic and electromagnetic threats, making them far more resilient than the relatively soft-bodied drones that current tactical lasers are optimized to defeat.
Laser performance is also highly susceptible to atmospheric interference: dust, moisture, turbulence, and weather conditions can scatter or absorb beam energy before it reaches the target. Even at 300 kw power levels, maintaining a focused beam with enough intensity to penetrate a fast-moving missile casing demands exquisite beam control, real-time tracking, and continuous aim-point maintenance. Any jitter, target occlusion, or platform vibration can degrade performance, rendering the shot ineffective. For all the promise of directed energy, cruise missile defense may represent its most technically unforgiving test yet.
That’s why JLWS is likely as much about the overall system as it is the laser array itself. Success will depend not just on raw power output — although, as the Navy’s experience has shown, that certainly matters — but on the integration of advanced sensors, precision targeting software, and beam control subsystems that can work in lockstep to generate and sustain a firing solution in real time. And that challenge doesn’t stop at the lab bench: JLWS will have to function on ruggedized, survivable platforms that can handle the the unique power generation and thermal management requirement that come with with high-energy laser weapons. After all, laser is only as useful as the system that can aim, fire, and sustain it under pressure.
If successful, the development of the JLWS would mark the first time a directed energy weapon plays a real, operational role in US homeland defense. After decades of overpromises and prototype shelfware, JLWS might be the Pentagon’s best chance yet to bring Reagan’s laser dream, however grounded, into real-world air defense.
~$51m in R&D... that won't get you much
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