Laser Weapons Are Finally Going to War: $15 Billion Spent So Far
The laser is called the sniper rifle of directed-energy weapons; the microwave is the electronic shotgun. The US military is shifting from R&D into procurement, but what is really in short supply are cheap interceptors — whether you can win every engagement and still not afford to fight is the question that matters.
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The laser is a sniper rifle, the microwave a shotgun
Wayne separates the two families of directed-energy weapons with an analogy: the laser is a sniper rifle, the high-powered microwave an electronic shotgun. A laser concentrates energy into a narrow beam, attacks one target at a time, and kills with heat by burning through it; the microwave's beam is wider and can hit the electronic systems of several targets at once. The Government Accountability Office puts peak power for high-powered microwaves at up to 100 megawatts, but comparing that directly with the kilowatt figures of a continuous-wave laser is meaningless, because the two have completely different characteristics: lasers are trying to push power up, microwaves are trying to widen the area effect. Which one you want depends on the target — a drone swarm suits a microwave, a single ballistic missile leaves you only the laser. That is because a microwave can make drones fail and fall out of the sky, but unlike a laser it cannot destroy a single missile flying at high speed.
— Wayne SandersChemical lasers failed on size and logistics, not on physics
After the laser was invented in the 1960s the military immediately saw its potential, but the real problems were electrical power and size. In the 1990s the US-Israeli Tactical High Energy Laser and DARPA's MIRACLE chemical laser both successfully shot down rockets, yet the full systems were enormous and logistically complex, and the programs were terminated in 2006. A chemical laser takes its light energy straight from a chemical reaction and needs no electricity — an oxygen-iodine laser was mounted on a Boeing 747 (YAL-1) to fly near ballistic-missile launch areas and try to intercept there — but carrying chemicals on an aircraft was simply too dangerous. The metric that now defines progress is SWaP: size, weight and power. Lasers used to be the size of a building precisely because generating beam energy took vast amounts of electricity; today's goal is to fit them onto trucks and warships.
— Wayne SandersThe handheld laser's bottleneck is generating and compressing power
Asked why the handheld laser gun of science-fiction movies still does not exist, Wayne points to "generation and compression." The fastest-moving ground platform today is the high-energy laser mounted on a Stryker armored vehicle, at 50 kilowatts, running off the vehicle's own power generation; if you want a 5-kilowatt beam to shoot down a drone, you may need 15 to 25 kilowatts of input power, and without a big enough power source you can only watch the drone fly toward you with nothing you can do about it. Electricity is the core constraint, not a gap in optical technology. That also explains why laser weapons have been in development for decades and are only now approaching the turn toward large-scale fielding.
— Wayne SandersExpensive interceptors have to stay in the mix
Many people assume lasers can replace interceptor missiles that cost millions of dollars apiece, but Wayne warns that if the other side launches a hypersonic weapon, you do not want to be gambling on a laser landing exactly on a target moving at Mach 5. So the real framework is integrated air and missile defense — a combination of layered defenses. The cost advantage of lasers and microwaves is the low price per shot, but you have to wait for the target to come inside killing range; against a weapon coming in 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 against long-range ballistic missiles, David's Sling for the medium range, Iron Dome against rockets, and now Iron Beam added to handle drones.
— Wayne SandersA commander under fire does not care what a missile costs
On who is thinking about cost at the moment of firing, Wayne splits the decision into four levels: tactical, operational, strategic and national. A frontline platoon leader or company commander facing a threat will use whatever it takes to protect the force and does not care in the slightest what the missile costs; but at the level of the theater commander and the Pentagon, you have to weigh whether spending a $4.1 million PAC-3 on a $30,000 drone is worth it. So the demand for "cheap weapons" comes from the top, not from the bottom. Only national-level decision-makers fold munitions consumption and supply-chain problems into the choice. That distinction explains why the US military began leaning toward low-cost intercept options after being worn down in Yemen and the Red Sea.
— Wayne SandersThe Pentagon is pivoting toward low-cost munitions
For 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 the other side wore it down with drones until something had to change. Wayne says the Pentagon is signing multi-year framework agreements to raise output sharply, but the core of it is recognizing that you cannot answer cheap threats with expensive solutions forever. One of his central judgments: in a future conflict, "you can win every single engagement and still lose the war economically." That is exactly the market demand behind low-cost intercept systems like Coyote, Vampire and APKWS. Battlefield commanders need more options in hand, not just expensive missiles to shoot dry.
— Wayne SandersStartups will take the middle of the interceptor market
Asked whether laser weapons will be strangled by the innovator's dilemma inside the defense primes, Wayne thinks the primes will indeed keep dominating the market for high-end exquisite interceptors, but the low-end and middle solutions have already gone to five companies holding Department of Defense contracts: Coaspire, Leidos, Anduril, Zone 5 and Castilian. What the Department of Defense wants is tens of thousands of rounds, not an increment from 620 to 2,000. So the primes have the advantage in the near term, and within three to five years a newer entrant like Anduril may take the middle of the market. It also means that investing in defense stocks cannot just track the traditional primes; you have to see who benefits as procurement shifts.
— Wayne SandersAI killer robots are still a long way off
Inside the Pentagon, Wayne says, AI is currently used only for intelligence analysis — tagging imagery for analysts and spotting changes — not for executing strike decisions. His earlier research at the War College was built around "AI and the hierarchy of trust." Everything between target identification and a tactical strike is still entirely human-in-the-loop: AI can help you find a target and raise an alert, but the final decision still rests with human commanders and intelligence analysts. To the worry that AI will decide on its own to destroy a target, Wayne says that future is still a long way off. The risk models are not ready, so the Pentagon is not using AI for autonomous killing; it is using it to sift military intelligence in place of drudge 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
| US spending on directed-energy weapons R&D to date | More than $15 billion | 42:55 |
| US Pacific Command PAC-3 annual production target | From 620 to 2,000 rounds (3.3x) | 37:51 |
| Cost of a single PAC-3 interceptor | About $4.1 million | 29:37 |
| Pentagon laser power goal | A 1-megawatt-class laser before 2030 | 43:57 |
| High-powered microwave peak power (GAO figure) | Up to 100 megawatts | 9:14 |
Glossary
- Directed Energy Weapons (DEW)
- Weapons that concentrate energy and direct it at a target, covering two families: lasers and high-powered microwaves.
- High-Powered Microwave (HPM)
- A weapon that fires a wide beam of electromagnetic pulses to wreck a target's electronic systems, much like an electronic shotgun.
- SWaP
- Size, weight and power — the key metric for whether a weapon system can actually be deployed, usually abbreviated SWaP.
- Exquisite munition
- An interceptor built around top-end guidance technology: expensive, but able to intercept hypersonic targets.
- Shore power
- Drawing on a fixed grid connection or a ship's own power plant rather than carrying a standalone generator.
How to listen
Defense-industry analysts, defense-tech investors, readers watching Chinese military modernization, and anyone trying to understand the US military's anxiety about burning through munitions.
The first few minutes are event promos and small talk; jump straight to 05:08 for the guest's military background.