Can Lasers Beat Drone Swarms? The Pentagon Is About To Find Out

Authored by Alex Kimani via OilPrice,

The enormous expansion of drone warfare is forcing militaries to reconsider how much ammunition they can afford to fire at relatively cheap targets. The Pentagon is betting that some of that ammunition can be replaced with electricity, selecting four directed-energy systems for operational testing at five U.S. military bases.

The Pentagon selected AeroVironment’s (NASDAQ: AVAV) Palletized High-Energy Laser, Boeing’s (NYSE: BA) Compact Laser Weapon System, Kord Technologies’ Firefly high-energy laser and Epirus’ Leonidas high-powered microwave. The three lasers concentrate energy on individual targets, while Leonidas uses microwave energy to disable electronics and can engage multiple drones.

Fort Bliss in Texas, Naval Base Kitsap in Washington, Fort Huachuca in Arizona, Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri will host the weapons. Congress mandated the five-base pilot earlier this year, with deployments scheduled to begin later in 2026.

The four weapons will operate at the five bases for a full year, giving the Pentagon its first sustained look at how directed-energy systems hold up outside short military demonstrations. More systems will get their chance in December, when Joint Interagency Task Force 401 stages a directed-energy “shoot-off” at Utah’s Dugway Proving Ground, with the Pentagon prepared to buy weapons that perform well.

“High-energy lasers and high-powered microwave systems are tools that can be effectively used in a layered drone defense,” Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, director of JIATF-401, said in announcing the selections. “This pilot program will test these capabilities in an operational environment so we can understand how best to integrate and sustain them to defend the homeland.”

The Pentagon is already committing billions of dollars to counter-drone defenses, with JIATF-401 awarding 10 contracts worth up to $4.15 billion in September under a wider procurement vehicle with a ceiling of $7 billion.

The cost difference can run into millions of dollars per engagement. According to the Government Accountability Office, firing a directed-energy weapon costs approximately $1 to $10 in fuel for electricity generation and cooling, compared with $4.1 million for a Patriot PAC-3 MSE interceptor in fiscal 2023. The Patriot can engage more sophisticated threats, including ballistic and cruise missiles, but using conventional interceptors against inexpensive drones creates an enormous cost disadvantage. Lasers and microwave weapons eliminate the need to replace ammunition after every engagement, although their effectiveness depends on available power, cooling, range and operating conditions.

Boeing has already put its Compact Laser Weapon System against Group 3 drones, destroying three during the Red Sands exercise in Saudi Arabia in 2024. The system used just 5 kilowatts of power and was plugged into the Army’s existing Forward Area Air Defense network, taking its targeting data from an external radar. Five kilowatts means keeping the beam on a drone longer than with more powerful lasers, but Boeing gets something in return: a smaller weapon that can be moved and deployed much more easily.

Epirus’ Leonidas uses high-powered microwave pulses to disable the electronics inside multiple drones at once, giving it a potential role against swarms. The company has also demonstrated Leonidas against fiber-optic-guided FPV drones, which maintain a physical connection to their operators instead of depending on the radio links targeted by conventional electronic jamming.

Ukraine is already putting the same economics to work against Russian drones, turning electricity into a 50-cent alternative to conventional air-defense ammunition. Ukrainian developers have built and tested Sunray and Tryzub, with a Sunray node costing roughly $300,000 to manufacture. Ukraine wants hundreds of the smaller laser systems mounted on vehicles and rooftops rather than a limited number of large installations. At 50 cents per shot, thousands of laser engagements would still cost less in ammunition than a single conventional air-defense missile.