Laser Weapons Are Finally Going to War: The US Has Already Spent $15 Billion on R&D
Lasers are the sniper rifle of directed-energy weapons; microwaves are the electronic shotgun. The US military is shifting from R&D to procurement, but what's really scarce is a cheap interceptor — whether you can win every engagement and still not afford to fight is the key question.
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A laser is a sniper rifle, a microwave is a shotgun
Wayne uses ‘a laser is a sniper rifle, a microwave is an electronic shotgun’ to distinguish the two kinds of directed-energy weapons: a laser concentrates energy into a narrow beam, engaging one target at a time and burning through with thermal energy; a microwave's beam is wider and can affect the electronic systems of multiple targets at once. GAO says high-power microwave peak power can reach 100 megawatts, but comparing that directly with the kilowatts of a continuous-wave laser is meaningless, because the two have completely different characteristics: lasers try to raise power, microwaves try to amplify area effects. Which you pick depends on the target — drone swarms suit microwaves, a single ballistic missile can only be met with a laser. The reason is that microwaves can make drones fail and crash, but they can't destroy a single missile flying at high speed the way a laser can.
— Wayne SandersChemical lasers failed on volume and logistics
After the laser was invented in the 1960s, the military immediately saw its potential, but the real problems were power and volume. In the 1990s the US-Israeli Tactical High Energy Laser and DARPA's MIRACLE chemical laser both successfully shot down rockets, but the whole system was enormous and logistically complex, and the program was terminated in 2006. Chemical lasers derive light energy directly from a chemical reaction and don't need electricity — the oxygen-iodine laser, for instance, was mounted on a Boeing 747 (YAL-1) in an attempt to fly near a ballistic missile launch area and intercept, but carrying chemicals aboard an aircraft was simply too dangerous. Today the core metric of technological progress is called SWaP: size, weight and power. Lasers used to be as big as a building, precisely because generating beam energy required enormous amounts of electrical power, and today's goal is to fit them into trucks and warships.
— Wayne SandersThe handheld laser bottleneck is power compression
Asked why the handheld laser guns of sci-fi movies still don't exist, Wayne points to the bottleneck as ‘generating and compressing power.’ The fastest land platform today is the high-energy laser mounted on a Stryker armored vehicle, at 50 kilowatts, drawing on the vehicle's own power generation; if you want a 5-kilowatt beam to shoot down drones, you may need 15 to 25 kilowatts of input power, and without enough power supply you can only watch the drone fly at you with no way to respond. Electricity is the core constraint, not a gap in optical technology. This also explains why, after decades of development, laser weapons are only now approaching the turning point of large-scale deployment.
— Wayne SandersYou still have to keep the expensive missiles
Many people assume lasers can replace interceptor missiles costing millions of dollars apiece, but Wayne warns that if the other side launches a hypersonic weapon, you don't want to gamble on a laser hitting a Mach 5 target just right. So the real framework is ‘integrated air and missile defense’ — a combination of layered defenses. The cost advantage of lasers and microwaves lies in their low cost per shot, but you have to wait for the target to come within kill range; against a weapon traveling at 4,000 miles per hour, you still need carefully engineered interceptors like PAC-3 and SM-3. Israel is the best example: Arrow 2/3 intercepts long-range ballistic missiles, David's Sling blocks medium-range, Iron Dome blocks rockets, and now Iron Beam is added to take down drones.
— Wayne SandersBattlefield commanders don't care about unit price
On who thinks about cost when firing, Wayne divides decisions into four levels: tactical, operational, strategic and national. A platoon leader or company commander at the front, facing a threat, will use every necessary means to protect the force and doesn't care at all how much a missile costs; but at the theater commander and Pentagon level, you have to consider whether it makes sense to use a $4.1 million PAC-3 to take down a $30,000 drone. So the demand for ‘cheap weapons’ comes from the top, not the bottom. Only national-level decision-makers factor munitions consumption and supply-chain problems into their choices. That distinction explains why, after being worn down in Yemen and the Red Sea, the US military began leaning toward low-cost interception options.
— Wayne SandersThe US military is shifting to low-cost munitions
Over the past few decades, the US military stockpiled more and more expensive precision interceptors for a high-end peer war, and then in Yemen and the Red Sea it was worn down by the other side's drones to the point where it had to change. Wayne says the Pentagon is signing multi-year framework agreements to sharply increase production, but the core is the realization that you can't forever answer a cheap threat with an expensive solution. One of his core judgments: in a future conflict, ‘you can win every engagement and still lose the war economically.’ This is exactly the market demand for low-cost interception systems like Coyote, Vampire and APKWS. Battlefield commanders need more options in hand, rather than only being able to fire off expensive missiles.
— Wayne SandersStartups are cutting into the middle market
Asked whether laser weapons will be strangled by the defense giants because of the innovator's dilemma, Wayne argues the giants will indeed continue to dominate the high-end interceptor market, but the low-end and middle solutions have already gone to five companies holding DoD contracts: Coaspire, Leidos, Anduril, Zone 5 and Castilian. What the Pentagon wants is a scale of tens of thousands, not an increment from 620 to 2,000. So in the short term the giants have the advantage, and within three to five years upstarts like Anduril may seize the middle market. That also means that when investing in defense stocks you can't just stare at the traditional giants — you have to see who benefits from the procurement shift.
— Wayne SandersAI killer robots are still a long way off
Wayne says that inside the Pentagon, AI is currently used only for intelligence analysis, tagging imagery for analysts and spotting changes, not for making strike decisions. His earlier research at the war college centered on ‘AI and levels of trust.’ Between target identification and tactical strike it is still entirely ‘human-in-the-loop’ — AI can help you find a target and raise an alert, but the final decision is still made by human commanders and intelligence analysts. Some people worry AI will decide on its own to destroy a target; Wayne says that future is still a long way off. The risk models aren't ready yet, so the Pentagon currently does not use AI for autonomous killing, but uses it for military intelligence screening to replace tedious work.
— Wayne SandersIn their own words · checked verbatim
a laser is a sniper rifle and a microwave is the electronic shotgun.
Wayne Sanders9:14
a laser, you're trying to scale that power, and the microwave is trying to scale the effect.
Wayne Sanders9:14
If you only have a five kilowatt laser beam at that point in time, but it requires 15 or 25 kilowatts of energy in that beam to be able to knock a drone down, then at that point in time, it's not going to be effective.
Wayne Sanders17:24
you can win every engagement defensively and still lose economically.
Wayne Sanders20:30
I need systems where I'm not spending $4.1 million to shoot down a $30,000 drone.
Wayne Sanders29:37
we are not at the point where AI is going to go, I see that truck, I've been given an order to destroy it, and I am going to take that target execution authority that I mentioned earlier, and just drop the bomb.
Wayne Sanders41:53
Figures
| Amount the US has invested in directed-energy weapon R&D | More than $15 billion | 42:55 |
| US Pacific Command PAC-3 annual production target | From 620 to 2,000 (3.3x) | 37:51 |
| Cost of a single PAC-3 interceptor | About $4.1 million | 29:37 |
| Pentagon target laser power | A 1-megawatt-class laser by 2030 | 43:57 |
| High-power microwave peak power (GAO data) | Up to 100 megawatts | 9:14 |
Glossary
- Directed Energy Weapons (DEW)
- Weapons that concentrate energy and fire it at a target, including the two broad categories of lasers and high-power microwaves.
- High-Powered Microwave (HPM)
- A weapon that emits a wide beam of electromagnetic pulses to damage a target's electronic systems, like an electronic shotgun.
- SWaP
- The key metric for whether a weapon system can be deployed, usually abbreviated SWaP.
- Exquisite munition
- An interceptor incorporating top-tier guidance technology, costly but capable of intercepting hypersonic targets.
- Shore power
- Refers to drawing on a fixed grid or a ship's own power supply, rather than carrying an independent generator.
How to listen
Defense industry analysts, defense-tech VCs, readers watching China's military modernization, and anyone trying to understand the US military's munitions-consumption anxiety.
The first few minutes of event announcements and small talk — jump straight to 05:08, where the guest's military background begins.