The US Military’s Laser Weapon Wake-Up Call
The rise of military laser weapons seemed all but inevitable. Now, the Pentagon’s dream appears in trouble.
The dream of arming the US military with high-energy laser weapons once seemed like a technological inevitability. Decades of research and development and billions in spending has given rise to a new class of directed energy systems with the promise to cheaply and precisely shoot down drones, rockets, mortars, and missiles — a holy grail of 21st-century air defense. And with military laser weapons now actively swatting incoming threats out of the sky in battlefields around the world, the age of Laser Wars appears to have officially arrived.
But in the span of just over a year, the US Defense Department has disclosed a string of setbacks across several flagship laser weapon programs. Taken together, they suggest that the US military’s directed energy strategy is headed for a serious wake-up call.
The Army’s Laser Stryker Isn’t Ready (And Might Never Be)
The US Army’s 50 kilowatt Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) system was supposed to be the Pentagon’s first operational mobile high-energy laser platform. But according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report recently surfaced by Laser Wars, the Army has now delayed production of the system by at least two years and is considering ditching the Stryker infantry fighting vehicle as its platform of choice entirely.
After deploying four DE M-SHORAD prototypes to Iraq earlier this year for “real-world testing,” soldier feedback was decidedly underwhelming, with the system struggling with issues like heat dissipation and tactical reliability. As Army acquisition chief Doug Bush admitted in May, the 50 kw system “is proving challenging to incorporate into a vehicle that has to move around constantly.”
The overall results of that testing were revealed in the new GAO report: “Results from the prototype system demonstration and experimentation events determined that the system was not mature enough to support the transition [to a program office].”
If a 50 kw system can’t survive routine field testing, it calls into question the Army’s entire assumption that laser weapons can ride into battle on combat vehicles at all. And if the service walks away from the Stryker platform, it will mark a major reset in a decade-long laser weapon effort — one that fundamentally challenges the vision of a truly expeditionary ground-based mobile laser platform.
The Navy’s HELIOS Laser Isn’t Living Up to the Hype
The US Navy’s High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) program was billed as a cutting-edge addition to the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer fleet, 60-kilowatt laser weapon paired with ISR and dazzling capabilities integrated directly into the ship’s Aegis combat system.
But as Laser Wars reported this past May, the HELIOS system installed aboard the USS Preble since 2022 is currently operating at just one-third of its intended power output due to unspecified issues that cropped up during recent testing. In addition, the Navy’s own public statements about the program have become increasingly opaque, with Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James Kilby stating in April that the service was “not ready to go all in yet” on shipboard laser weapons.
Despite dramatic Pentagon photos showing the HELIOS firing during testing, there’s no clear evidence the system has ever engaged a real target in an operational setting – or that it can do so reliably. (When queried about the matter in February, a Naval Sea Systems Command spokesman told Laser Wars that the service does not comment on “planned or potential future operations.”) And if HELIOS can’t even deliver 60 kw reliably, it casts doubt on the Navy’s ability to scale up to the 150 kw class needed to counter maneuvering missiles or drone swarms.
The Air Force Gives Up on Putting Lasers on Aircraft
As the Army and Navy struggle to deploy lasers on ground and sea platforms, the US Air Force just gave up on its airborne laser efforts altogether.
In mid-May 2024, I reported for Military.com that the Air Force had officially shelved its Self-Protect High-Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD) —a years-long effort to mount a laser weapon on a tactical fighter jet to intercept incoming missiles — without the system ever actually it making aboard an aircraft for testing. This news followed the quiet demise of another airborne laser program the previous March: Air Force Special Operations Command’s Airborne High Energy Laser (AHEL) that was supposed to ride aboard an AC-130J Ghostrider gunship. That system never made it to flight testing either, with officials citing "technical challenges.” With no follow-on effort announced, the Air Force currently has no laser-equipped aircraft in development or testing.”
At this point, the Air Force has walked away from every serious attempt to put a directed energy weapon in the sky despite decades of ambitious plans. So far, only the Boeing 747-based YAL-1 Airborne Laser Test Bed has managed to neutralize a pair of ballistic missiles in a 2010, and even that was cancelled over “significant affordability and technology problems.” While the Missile Defense Agency is once again eyeing airborne lasers as a potential ballistic missile countermeasure, another Air Force effort in the area seems increasingly unlikely.
What Comes Next
These setbacks don’t necessarily indicate that the US military’s laser weapon dream is dead. While the Defense Department’s investment in directed energy has declined sharply in recent years — to $789.7 million requested in fiscal year 2025, down from $1.1 billion appropriated in fiscal year 2024 and $1.6 billion appropriated in fiscal year 2023, according to the Congressional Research Service — the $150 billion reconciliation bill hammered out by the White House and congressional Republicans in April includes a fresh $250 million infusion for the “development and testing of directed energy capabilities” as part of a broader push to bolster the military’s counter-drone capabilities. And with the Army’s 20 kw Palletized-High Energy Laser (P-HEL) actively watching over US troops deployed overseas, the prospect of real-world laser warfare, after decades of R&D, has likely never appeared more achievable to American military planners.
But the recently disclosed issues with the DE M-SHORAD, HELIOS, SHiELD and AHEL efforts do suggest that high-power laser weapons are still far from plug-and-play technology. After all, laser weapons face unique physics constraints like atmospheric distortion, power storage, heat dissipation, and extreme optical precision, which makes integrating them into platforms designed for traditional weapons much harder than anyone hoped.
Indeed, the core problem facing US military laser weapons isn’t purely technical but likely architectural as well. Lasers don’t bolt on to tactical vehicles: they require rethinking power generation, heat management, and platform design from the ground up, something the US military may have underestimated. Traditional weapon systems are largely self-contained and modular, capable of being installed or removed without significantly reconfiguring the host vehicle’s engine, electronics, or cooling system. Bolt-on systems like the Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station for ground vehicles and M134 Minigun pods for fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, for example, integrate with minimal technical disruption. Given its unique requirements, laser weapons may end up the directed energy equivalent of the the A-10 Thunderbolt II’s iconic 30mm GAU-8/A Avenger cannon, with the host platform explicitly designed to accommodate its exquisite weapon system.
These recent setbacks don’t mean the US military is out of the directed energy game – far from it. They are, however, a stark reminder that laser weapons are not technological inevitabilities but engineering moonshots that require innovation, patience, and grit to solve for. The Pentagon’s wake-up call is about expectations: it’s time to stop treating lasers like a magic bullet and start treating them like long-term bets with high potential upside.
The Pentagon should probably figure this out sooner rather than later. Israel just made history with the first combat kill with a laser weapon. China is developing multiple mobile laser weapon systems and exporting them around the world. The UK is rushing to field a fleet of laser-equipped warships, both manned and unmanned. Turkey is rapidly building an indigenous laser arsenal. And European nations are investing billions in consolidated laser R&D. America once led the world in laser weapons – now it might be in danger of falling behind.
Great article. What I'm wondering is: do all these other countries just do it better than the US, or have they not found out the problems yet?
good writing! very interesting topic