U.S. Army Moves to Make High-Energy Lasers a Permanent Counter-Drone Weapon.

The U.S. Army is preparing to make high-energy lasers a permanent part of its counter-drone arsenal as it negotiates with AeroVironment for the Enduring High Energy Laser (E-HEL), potentially establishing the service’s first directed-energy program of record. A production agreement potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars could move U.S. Army laser weapons beyond years of experimentation and into sustained operational fielding.

Designed to destroy Group 1 through Group 3 drones with directed energy rather than expendable interceptor missiles, E-HEL could give U.S. Army units a reusable hard-kill layer against increasingly numerous unmanned threats while preserving costly missile inventories. The program would mark a major step toward integrating laser weapons into layered U.S. Army air defense.

Related Topic: First Operational Use for U.S. Army Laser Weapons with DE M-SHORAD Air Defense Vehicle

U.S. Army DE M-SHORAD equipped with a 50-kW-class high-energy laser on a Stryker armored vehicle. Lessons from DE M-SHORAD experimentation are informing the Army’s Enduring High Energy Laser (E-HEL), which emphasizes a more modular and deployable counter-drone capability. (Picture source: U.S. Department of War/Defense)

According to information released by Breaking Defense, Lt. Gen. Frank Lozano, the U.S. Army’s portfolio acquisition executive for Fires, confirmed on July 14, 2026, that negotiations with AeroVironment were underway after the company demonstrated what he described as a promising capability at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Reporting published on August 4 indicates that the expected agreement could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars and cover up to 20 systems, although the U.S. Army has not yet publicly confirmed a final award, contract value or production quantity.

The significance extends well beyond another U.S. military laser demonstration. E-HEL is being developed as an operational program of record, meaning the U.S. Army is preparing to place high-energy lasers within an enduring acquisition, budgeting and sustainment structure rather than treating them solely as experimental equipment. Breaking Defense identifies E-HEL as the U.S. Army’s first program of record for a new family of high-energy lasers primarily intended to defeat drones.

That transition comes as inexpensive one-way attack drones are creating an increasingly difficult air-defense equation for U.S. forces. Conventional surface-to-air missiles remain essential against higher-end threats, but repeatedly firing costly interceptors at relatively inexpensive unmanned aircraft can rapidly consume ammunition and create an unfavorable cost exchange. A laser uses generated electrical energy rather than a missile for each engagement, potentially giving commanders a deeper defensive magazine against repeated drone attacks while preserving kinetic interceptors for threats that require them.

The E-HEL requirement reflects lessons from the U.S. Army’s earlier Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense effort, which integrated a 50-kilowatt-class laser onto a Stryker armored vehicle. DE M-SHORAD demonstrated that a high-energy laser could be brought into a maneuver air-defense formation, but it also exposed the engineering difficulty of combining substantial electrical generation, cooling, beam-control equipment and sensors on an armored vehicle expected to operate continuously under tactical conditions.

Instead of making the Stryker-mounted configuration the enduring answer, the U.S. Army is moving toward a more compact and modular laser architecture. The original E-HEL requirement sought systems suitable for protecting both semi-fixed positions and maneuver forces, giving commanders greater flexibility to defend airfields, command posts, logistics areas and other high-value sites while retaining the ability to reposition the weapon as operational requirements change.

This distinction is important because it suggests that the U.S. Army is prioritizing deployability and sustainable combat effectiveness rather than simply pursuing greater laser power. A weapon with a lower nominal output than the 50-kilowatt DE M-SHORAD system could still provide greater battlefield value if it is easier to transport, maintain, power, and integrate across multiple counter-drone missions.

AeroVironment’s LOCUST X3 is closely connected with the E-HEL competition, although the U.S. Army has not publicly confirmed that LOCUST X3 is the exact configuration covered by the current negotiations. Lozano did not identify AeroVironment’s proposed system when announcing the talks, and the company declined to confirm the configuration to Breaking Defense.

AeroVironment unveiled LOCUST X3 in March 2026 as the third generation of its high-energy laser weapon family. The company describes it as a modular directed-energy weapon designed for precise, speed-of-light engagements against unmanned aerial threats, building on earlier LOCUST systems already used in U.S. military testing.

The technical characteristics publicly associated with LOCUST X3 make the connection particularly relevant. AeroVironment has described the weapon as scalable between approximately 20 and more than 35 kilowatts and designed to defeat Group 1 through Group 3 unmanned aircraft. Those categories range from small drones to substantially larger unmanned aircraft, giving the U.S. Army a potential hard-kill option against threats beyond the commercial quadcopters commonly associated with counter-UAS missions.

For an operational laser, output power is only part of the lethality equation. The weapon must detect or receive a cue on the target, establish precise tracking, keep the beam focused on a vulnerable point and maintain sufficient energy on that point to produce structural, propulsion or electronic failure. Improvements in machine vision, beam control and adaptive optics are therefore as important to practical performance as increases in raw laser power.

E-HEL is intended to operate within a wider short-range air-defense architecture rather than as an isolated weapon. Connecting the laser with U.S. Army sensors and Forward Area Air Defense command-and-control systems would allow external sensors to detect and classify incoming drones before transferring engagement information to the laser.

That approach could allow commanders to allocate different effectors according to the threat. Electronic warfare could disrupt drones susceptible to jamming, guns could engage targets under favorable conditions, lasers could provide repeated hard-kill engagements, and surface-to-air missiles could remain available for more demanding threats. This layered concept is increasingly important as mass drone attacks attempt to overwhelm air defenses through numbers rather than the performance of any individual aircraft.

The economic argument is one of the strongest reasons the Pentagon continues investing in directed energy. Once the laser, power supply, and supporting equipment are deployed, an engagement consumes electrical energy instead of a complete interceptor missile. The result can reduce the marginal cost per engagement dramatically and potentially allow a defended site to remain in combat longer without requiring continuous deliveries of missile ammunition.

This does not mean lasers can replace conventional air defense. Their effectiveness can decline in rain, fog, smoke, dust, and other atmospheric conditions that interfere with beam propagation, while a laser normally engages targets sequentially rather than destroying an entire incoming formation simultaneously. Power generation and thermal management also determine how quickly the weapon can conduct repeated engagements.

Those limitations help explain why E-HEL is best understood as another layer of counter-drone defense rather than a substitute for missiles and guns. Under favorable conditions, the laser could handle suitable unmanned targets at a much lower engagement cost, allowing commanders to reserve more expensive interceptors for threats outside the laser’s effective envelope or for situations where atmospheric conditions reduce directed-energy performance.

Safety will also influence how widely E-HEL can be deployed. A high-energy beam requires strict control of firing geometry and surrounding airspace, particularly around bases supporting helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft and military drones. According to recent reporting, Pentagon and Federal Aviation Administration officials attended an AeroVironment demonstration at White Sands as the military examined how such weapons could operate safely around crowded airspace.

The potential size of the procurement remains important but unsettled. The U.S. Army’s original request for information referenced acquisition of up to 20 E-HEL systems, while later acquisition material has circulated with different quantities. Until a final contract is announced, 20 should therefore be treated as the original requirement rather than a confirmed production order.

The same caution applies to the reported contract value. Sources cited by WIRED expect an AeroVironment agreement worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but neither the U.S. Army nor the company had publicly confirmed that amount as of August 7. The distinction is important because the negotiations could still change the final quantity, configuration, delivery schedule and overall value.

For AeroVironment, securing E-HEL would represent considerably more than another directed-energy demonstration contract. A program-of-record acquisition would create an enduring production and sustainment requirement and could position the company for subsequent laser upgrades and additional counter-UAS procurement as the U.S. Army expands protection of forces against one-way attack drones.

For the U.S. Army, E-HEL could mark the point at which decades of high-energy laser experimentation begin producing a routinely fielded combat capability. The shift from the larger Stryker-mounted DE M-SHORAD experiment toward a more compact and modular E-HEL approach indicates that the service is applying earlier lessons to a weapon designed around deployability, affordability, and the rapidly expanding counter-drone mission.

If the negotiations result in the anticipated production agreement, the strategic impact will therefore extend beyond the initial batch of lasers. E-HEL would establish an acquisition pathway for directed-energy weapons inside the U.S. Army while giving commanders another way to defeat inexpensive drones without consuming a costly missile for every engagement. In an environment where mass-produced unmanned aircraft are increasingly used to exhaust air defenses, that combination of magazine depth, lower engagement cost, and modular deployment could prove more important than laser power alone.

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Written by Alain Servaes – Chief Editor, Army Recognition Group
Alain Servaes is a former infantry non-commissioned officer and the founder of Army Recognition. With over 20 years in defense journalism, he provides expert analysis on military equipment, NATO operations, and the global defense industry.