Israel Is Forging Ahead With an Airborne 'Iron Beam’
While the US retreats from its airborne laser weapon ambitions, Israel is taking directed energy to the skies.
The US military may be stepping back from the development of airborne laser weapons, but the Israeli military appears to be moving full speed ahead.
Speaking during an earnings call on August 13, Elbit Systems president and CEO Bezhalel Machlis stated that the company was continuing work for the Israeli Air Force on an “airborne high-power solution” based on its 100 kilowatt ‘Iron Beam’ laser weapon system developed in conjunction with defense contractor Rafael.
“There is a lot of interest for this solution for other customers – international customers as well globally,” Machlis said.
Elbit has been working with the IAF to develop airborne high-energy laser weapons since at least 2021, when Israel’s Ministry of Defense announced that it had successfully tested such a system, known as the High-Power Laser Weapon System, mounted on the side of a prop plane against several aerial drone targets.
Watch Elbit’s High-Power Laser Weapon System engage drone targets:
Machlis’ update on Elbit’s laser efforts comes just months after the Israeli Defense Forces released footage showing its Lite Beam and Iron Beam-M laser weapons burning fixed-wing drones launched by Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon during Israel’s October 2024 invasion out of the sky — the first known combat laser kill ever recorded.
It also comes amid an apparent retreat from airborne laser weapon efforts by the United States, after spending more than half a century pioneering the concept. As Laser Wars previously reported, the US Air Force’s fiscal year 2026 budget request explicitly states that the service plans to “stop work” outright on its existing lines of airborne laser R&D — a move that came on the heels of the termination of two projects aimed at mounting laser weapons on a fighter jet and an AC-130J Ghostrider gunship, respectively.
Part of that retreat likely reflects the harsh physics of airborne lasers: generating and cooling sufficient power inside a relatively small aircraft while maintaining a stable, coherent beam through turbulence and atmospheric distortion. And while the Air Force’s airborne laser pullback doesn’t preclude the service from once again restarting its efforts down the line, it appears to signal that technical hurdles continue to confound US military planners.
In contrast to the United States, Israel appears willing to absorb those technical hurdles in pursuit of near-term advantage. The country’s doctrine is built on rapid fielding of disruptive technologies, particularly in air and missile defense. With the original ground-based Iron Beam laser weapon already conceived as an “infinite magazine” counterpart to the interceptor-based Iron Dome, adapting it for airborne use would give the IAF another mobile, flexible layer of defense against drones and rockets.
And unlike the US, Israel has the advantage of proximity to the problem: its skies are already dense with drone and rocket threats, and combat provides an immediate feedback loop for testing and iteration. Just like the Ukrainian front lines (and war-torn Syria), this pressure-cooker environment makes Israel a natural laboratory for novel defense technology like airborne directed energy: even if the systems aren’t perfect, they’ll be tested, refined, and deployed faster than in the context of the US testing ecosystem.
The US once positioned itself as the pioneer of airborne laser weapons, only to stall out after decades of false starts. Israel now has a chance to seize that mantle — and if Iron Beam does successfully take flight under combat conditions, it will mark yet another historic moment in the history of directed energy on the battlefield.
