U.S. Army Accelerates Laser and Microwave Weapons to Defeat Mass Drone Attacks.

The U.S. military has publicly acknowledged that directed energy weapons, including lasers and high-power microwaves, are moving from experimentation into scaled deployment across multiple services. The shift reflects growing pressure to counter low-cost drones and missile salvos without exhausting traditional interceptor stockpiles.

A blunt statement posted this week by the Department of War’s Chief Technology Office on X signaled a shift in tone from experimentation to execution. “Yes, the Department of War has directed energy weapons. Yes, we are scaling them,” the message read, leaving little ambiguity about intent. In Washington’s current branding, “Department of War” functions as a secondary designation for the Department of Defense under a 5 September 2025 executive order, but the language matters. It frames lasers and high-power microwaves not as futuristic research projects but as warfighting tools moving toward broader operational use. The question now confronting U.S. planners is whether these systems can transition from limited prototypes and niche shipboard installations into dependable defensive firepower capable of restoring magazine depth as cheap drones and massed cruise-missile salvos increasingly define modern battlefields.
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Mounted on a Stryker M-SHORAD vehicle, the U.S. Army's 50 kW-class high-energy laser is designed to engage and destroy small drones, loitering munitions, and select rocket and mortar threats at the speed of light, providing a low-cost, deep-magazine air defense option for maneuver units (U.S. DoW).

Directed energy weapons split into two families. High-energy lasers deliver a narrow beam that heats and structurally damages a target, typically requiring line-of-sight, stable tracking, and enough dwell time to burn through critical components. High-power microwave systems trade pinpoint lethality for area effects that can disrupt electronics across multiple drones at once, making them attractive against swarms when rules of engagement and collateral constraints favor non-kinetic defeat. Congress’s own primers stress the economics driving the push: when powered electrically, a laser shot’s marginal cost is closer to the price of energy than the price of an interceptor, and that cost-exchange logic becomes compelling when adversaries can launch dozens of one-way drones for the price of a single missile. The same congressional analysis also captures the scaling roadmap the Pentagon has been advertising internally for years: raising practical power from roughly today’s 150 kW class toward 500 kW in the 2025-2030 window, with megawatt-class aspirations beyond that, because higher power expands the target set from drones and mortars into more stressing cruise-missile profiles.

On the ground, the U.S. Army’s most visible step is the 50 kW directed-energy Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense effort, a Stryker-mounted laser variant that sits inside the broader M-SHORAD family. Development began in 2019, and Raytheon secured a $123 million developmental contract in 2021 after a competitive shoot-off against Northrop Grumman. The Army reports the 50 kW class has scored range success against a variety of drones, but officials still acknowledge the harder problem: replicating test-range performance in the tactical environment and extending effectiveness into rockets, artillery, and mortars. That gap became harder to ignore after four Stryker-mounted prototypes deployed to the Middle East in February 2024 for soldier testing, where initial feedback was described as not overwhelmingly positive, a reminder that dust, heat, cluttered airspace, maintenance burdens, and power management can be as decisive as beam quality. For fixed and semi-fixed site defense, the Army’s Indirect Fire Protection Capability portfolio is pairing a 300 kW-class laser concept designed by Dynetics with a microwave option aimed squarely at small-drone swarms. In January 2023, the Army awarded Epirus a reported $66.1 million to deliver four high-power microwave prototypes, and official documentation notes that the last two systems were delivered in May 2024 after training and developmental testing activities.

The Air Force’s counter-drone microwave work shows what deployable is supposed to look like when planners say the word aloud. AFRL’s Tactical High Power Operational Responder, known as THOR, is described as a counter-swarm electromagnetic weapon built for airbase defense, stowing in a 20-foot transport container, running off a wall plug, and setting up in roughly three hours with minimal user training. Its concept of employment is simple and brutally modern: detect a cluster, pulse in nanoseconds, and disable multiple drones without firing a round, with a follow-on Mjolnir variant promised to improve range, reliability, and manufacturing readiness. At sea, the Navy has quietly fielded a different slice of the directed-energy stack: ODIN, a shipboard dazzler intended to counter unmanned aircraft and complicate adversary intelligence collection. ODIN has been installed on eight Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, funded and fielded outside a traditional program-of-record path, and naval officials have publicly described it as a laser weapon system first installed on USS Dewey. In plain terms, the fleet has already decided that blinding and disrupting sensors is sometimes the fastest win, especially when commanders want reversible effects and escalation control in crowded littorals.

Geopolitically, the United States is not racing itself; it is racing China’s industrial momentum and Russia’s willingness to field opaque systems with strategic messaging value. China has pursued directed energy since at least the 1980s, including a reported 30 kW road-mobile laser known as LW-30 for drones and precision-guided threats, alongside longer-term ambitions for laser capabilities aimed at satellites and their sensors. Russia, meanwhile, has leaned into counter-space signaling. Moscow has deployed the Peresvet ground-based laser with some mobile intercontinental ballistic missile units and continues work to increase its power and adapt it for additional roles, while Russian state messaging has portrayed Peresvet as entering combat service under a testing regime. The U.S. advantage remains integration discipline and a combat-tested sensor-to-shooter ecosystem, but the vulnerability is scale. Lasers and microwaves only become strategically meaningful when they are fielded in numbers, sustained in harsh climates, and backed by the electrical generation, thermal management, and training pipelines that turn speed-of-light physics into repeatable tactical outcomes.