US Army Laser Vehicles Down Enemy Drones In Mideast Combat
ANALYSIS – We may finally have a cost-effective way to down swarms of enemy drones. After decades of research and development, the U.S. military is officially using battlefield laser weapons, with its 20-kilowatt P-HEL system deployed in combat zones overseas.
Deployed in 2022, the P-HEL (Palletized High Energy Laser) has reportedly already shot down multiple attacking drones at an unspecified location in the Middle East.
Military.com noted:
While the Army’s top general responsible for counter-drone efforts had previously stated that several different laser weapons systems were undergoing “operational assessments” in the U.S. Central Command, U.S. Africa Command and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command areas of responsibility, news of the P-HEL’s operational employment marks the U.S. military’s first publicly acknowledged deployment of a working laser weapon for air defense outside of experimental testing.
The average laser weapon costs only between $1 and $10 per shot, compared to hundreds of thousands to upwards of two million dollar for a missile.
Military.com added: “The $2.1 million Standard Missile-2 naval missile and the $480,000 Stinger missile that have helped run up a $1 billion tab for the Pentagon in the Middle East since October.”
At the heart of this latest system is the BlueHalo Locust, a 1.5-ton solid-state laser system with its own target-tracking radar, guided with an Xbox controller, which provides 360-degree coverage for air defense.
The P-HEL’s employment comes as the U.S. military seeks to bolster its air defense capabilities to protect service members abroad not just with expensive conventional munitions but effective, lower-cost, counter-drone solutions that can knock incoming threats out of the sky without breaking the bank.
With their effectively unlimited supply of ammunition, these weapons can shoot down drones as fast and as relentlessly as they come. Precision and speed-of-light engagement mean lasers can engage many drones rapidly as the last line of defense in a layered system.
Earlier this year the Army sent four very cool Stryker-mounted 50-kilowatt laser prototypes to the Middle East for soldiers to test out against aerial threats. But the initial feedback was not good.
About those systems, Dubbed the Directed Energy Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (DEM-SHORAD), Army acquisition head Doug Bush said according to Breaking Defense: “What we’re finding is where the challenges are with directed energy at different power levels. That [50-kilowatt] power level is proving challenging to incorporate into a vehicle that has to move around constantly — the heat dissipation, the amount of electronics, kind of the wear and tear of a vehicle in a tactical environment versus a fixed site.”
Still, the latest reports about the 20-kilowatt P-HEL system are very encouraging as a true combat platform.
And these weapons have been a long-time coming. As Popular Mechanics noted:
LASER WEAPONS HAVE LONG BEEN ROMANTICIZED in fiction and pop culture. Who wasn’t in awe of the mighty power of the Death Star in Star Wars, a laser weapon so powerful it blew up a planet? As far back as 1897, science fiction writer H.G. Wells conceived of a Martian heat ray as the perfect weapon, aimed as easily as a searchlight and destroying whatever it touched.
Creating such a weapon was no easy feat, however. Scientists investigated a number of “death ray” concepts in the early 20th century without success, although efforts to use a beam of radio waves as a weapon led directly to the invention of radar.
Einstein developed the theory for the laser in 1917, and military funding helped turn that theory into reality with the first laboratory demonstration in 1960.
Technical challenges constrained military applications of lasers. It was impractical to create a beam powerful enough to sink a battleship, destroy a tank, or down an aircraft. But a laser might burn through the metal skin of a missile, causing it to crash or explode. Lasers were seen as the answer to the Soviet missile threat, and after the Cuban Missile Crisis President Kennedy gave laser missile defense the “highest national priority.”
But this is just the beginning: “the P-HEL’s deployment may be a sign of things to come,” notes Military.com.
The Pentagon currently spends roughly $1 billion a year on directed energy weapons and has 31 different systems at various stages of development, the majority of which are laser systems.
The outlet adds:
In recent months, the Army has not only deployed a platoon of four 50-kilowatt Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense, or DE M-SHORAD, prototypes to Central Command for “real world testing,” but taken possession of its most powerful laser yet — the 300-kilowatt Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser, or IFPC-HEL — to potentially counter incoming cruise missiles. The service also last year awarded a contract to P-HEL maker BlueHalo for an additional 20-kilowatt laser system for the so-called Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser, or AMP-HEL, which will eventually integrate into the service’s upcoming Infantry Squad Vehicle.
It seems some of these varied efforts are now finally paying off.
Paul Crespo is the Managing Editor of American Liberty Defense News. As a Marine Corps officer, he led Marines, served aboard ships in the Pacific and jumped from helicopters and airplanes. He was also a military attaché with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at U.S. embassies worldwide. He later ran for office, taught political science, wrote for a major newspaper and had his own radio show. A graduate of Georgetown, London and Cambridge universities, he brings decades of experience and insight to the issues that most threaten our American liberty – at home and from abroad.