Army’s high-energy laser competition to kick off early next year

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Army plans to choose a few teams from a larger pool to compete to develop its Enduring High Energy Laser, or HEL, system for short-range air defense in early 2025, Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch, the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office director, said last week.

The Army will carry teams through design and development and plans to select a winner to build an enduring HEL for short-range air defense in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, according to a broad agency announcement for the effort posted to Sam.gov .

The service held an industry day in July and has been collecting proposals with “a lot of interest from those industry partners we’ve seen and some that we hadn’t necessarily seen before,” Rasch told Defense News in an interview at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium here.

“Some of them are teaming up together. Some of them are on their own. But they see what other folks are doing and trying to get better,” Rasch added. “That is where innovation occurs and that’s where we maintain that leap ahead capability over our adversaries.”

The service has spent years developing lasers for various weapons systems and recently deployed four Directed Energy Maneuver-SHORAD Stryker Combat Vehicle-based prototypes to the U.S. Central Command area of operations to evaluate how well a 50-kilowatt laser could fulfill the mission of taking out short-range air threats.

The first prototypes consist of a 50-kilowatt laser from Raytheon. Kord Technologies, a KBR company, is the lead integrator.

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Rasch said those prototypes , and other efforts like putting larger lasers on palletized weapon systems and smaller lasers on the Infantry Squad Vehicle and the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, have taught the service what could potentially be the sweet spot for balancing laser power needs with other factors that play into taking out enemy air drones of various sizes.

Rasch’s office is currently evaluating 10-, 20-, 50- and 300-kilowatt options for a wide variety of threats and missions. The 300-kilowatt laser is designed for the Indirect Fire Protection Capability, which is a system that will use kinetic, laser and high-powered microwave weapons to destroy threats including rockets, artillery, mortars, drones and cruise missiles. The Army is to receive that laser weapon next year.

“That informed the Enduring High Energy Laser [broad agency announcement] that we put out,” Rasch said. “You’ll notice… that we didn’t reference kilowatts, right? It’s easy to talk about lasers in regards to kilowatts because it’s easy to get your head wrapped around more kilowatts, probably better, less kilowatts, probably not as effective or lethal, but that’s only one factor that comes into how effective the system is downrange.”

For example, Rasch noted, a 50-kilowatt system might have an ideal beam director “so it’s not making all the proper utilization of beam forming and getting that power down range. You might not be as effective as a 30-kilowatt, so there’s multiple components and multiple levers… that come into play.”

The extensive evaluations have led the Army to see “how those systems perform from the different designs at the system level and at the component level and sub-component level. It’s really, I think, opened up the aperture on what we know about how to make effective laser systems,” Rasch said.

The Army has also learned about what will be needed to sustain directed energy systems in the Middle East.

“It’s a big step to go from lab demonstration of a capability or even taking it out to a range for a week or two to giving it to soldiers for good and then having them take it, quite frankly, in some of the most austere places that you would ever want to put equipment,” Rasch said.

“We’ve actually made some big inroads on how to do sustainment repairs in a really ugly environment where dust particles are really high,” he added. “Ultimately we want to get these systems to … where your soldiers can pull out a piece and put in another piece in a fight.”

In addition to the four prototypes already downrange, Rasch’s office will soon receive prototypes from two additional teams – Lockheed Martin and nLight – each offering different design solutions, which the office will evaluate over the next several years in addition to the original DE M-SHORAD prototyping effort.