Laser

Germany has launched a new effort to develop an airborne laser weapon. MBDA Deutschland has received a contract to build a pod-based demonstrator intended to lay the technological foundations that could lead to future directed-energy capabilities aboard Luftwaffe aircraft. The new contract is Germany’s first formal foray into airborne laser weapons, but builds on years of German investment and maritime laser weapon trials.

As we have explored in the past, translating that progress into a practical aircraft-mounted weapon presents a much greater engineering challenge. While hurdles apply to lasers in general, they are particularly acute in airborne applications.

MBDA announced today that it had been contracted by the Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support (BAAINBw) to undertake the development effort. The project centers on a pod-based demonstrator system, with essential components already being designed.

According to MBDA, the longer-term objective is to develop an airborne laser capability that could be used to shoot down enemy drones and cruise missiles. There are other potential use cases, which we will come back to later on. An accompanying rendering also showed a pair of large, stealthy, fighter-like uncrewed aircraft with laser pods under the fuselage.

The company described airborne laser development as the “supreme discipline” of laser weapon technology, citing the particularly demanding requirements for size, weight, and resistance to the stresses associated with flight.

The announcement provides few details about the demonstrator’s technical specifications, intended host aircraft, laser output, or anticipated development schedule. No contract value or timeline has been disclosed.

The airborne demonstrator builds on a longer-running German effort to develop directed-energy technology. According to MBDA, laser technology has been considered a strategic priority for German research and development since 2019. It is also designated a key national technology under the German government’s National Security and Defense Industry Strategy (SVI Strategy).

MBDA is a fairly well-established industrial partner in this effort, having worked on laser effectors and weapons for all branches of the German armed forces. The company also highlights substantial investments of its own in recent years, which it says have enabled it to advance the underlying technologies and build and test various demonstrators.

An existing domestic technology base could provide MBDA with a head start in developing the airborne system. Experience with laser sources, beam control, tracking, and thermal management could potentially be carried over into the laser pod.

MBDA’s airborne project builds on a substantial history of German laser weapon development. The company says it has been working on the necessary technologies since 2008, conducting successive demonstrations and technology trials. It claims to have demonstrated the functionality of a complete laser weapon system as early as 2012.

A particularly important milestone came through cooperation with Rheinmetall. In 2021, the two companies received a BAAINBw contract to develop a maritime laser weapon demonstrator for the German Navy. The system was subsequently installed aboard the F124 frigate Sachsen in June 2022 and underwent an extensive series of sea trials that continued until September 2023.

During six test campaigns spanning nearly a year, the demonstrator conducted more than 100 test firings against different targets under increasingly complex conditions. The trials included tracking highly agile targets, integrating sensors and command systems, and engaging targets with the high-energy laser. A drone was also successfully shot down during a demonstration.

MBDA subsequently continued developing more compact and modular laser weapon configurations, seeking to move beyond the container-based demonstrator used aboard Sachsen. In September 2024, MBDA and Rheinmetall signed a further cooperation agreement aimed at developing a marketable maritime laser weapon, particularly for countering drones.

However, there is a big difference between a maritime laser weapon demonstration and adapting that same technology to aircraft. The power, cooling, weight, vibration, volume, and aerodynamic constraints of airborne operations bring a very different set of engineering challenges.

The attraction of an airborne laser weapon lies in its ability to engage incoming threats without expending conventional missiles, offering a functionally unlimited magazine depth as long as there is available electrical power and cooling capacity. This could be particularly valuable when facing down large waves of drones and/or cruise missiles, which, as mentioned, are the primary targets MBDA is envisioning for a future podded airborne laser weapon.

The increasing proliferation of relatively inexpensive longer-range one-way attack drones is already driving particularly significant demand for new, lower-cost anti-air intercept options and greater magazine depth. The transformation of the 70mm laser-guided Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II) rocket, originally designed for air-to-surface attacks, into a highly effective counter-drone weapon that aircraft can carry in large numbers is a prime example of this.

The other potential use cases for a podded airborne laser weapon, as well, include attacking targets on the surface. In this mode, lasers offer the additional benefit of being silent and largely invisible to the naked eye, creating additional dilemmas for opponents who may not know where an attack is coming from. Still, this would be very limited to certain types of soft targets, if any at all.

Furthermore, crewed and uncrewed aircraft could also use laser pods for protecting themselves or other critical aerial assets against incoming threats, such as surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles. Drones with these pods could also potentially be able to shoot down missiles streaking toward high-value assets like airborne early warning aircraft, tankers, and other platforms.

At the same time, as we have discussed in the past, putting a high-energy laser aboard an aircraft presents a difficult combination of power, weight, thermal-management, and optical-control requirements. The system must accommodate the laser, its power-generation and conditioning equipment, cooling systems, beam director, tracking sensors, and associated electronics within a relatively constrained package.

Waste heat is a particularly important consideration. High-energy lasers generate considerable thermal loads, which must be removed without compromising the weapon or the aircraft’s other systems.

An externally mounted pod must also withstand aerodynamic loads, vibration, acceleration, and temperature variations. Its optical system must maintain precise beam alignment despite aircraft movement and vibration.

Atmospheric conditions introduce another limitation. Moisture, dust, and turbulence can absorb, scatter, or distort laser energy, reducing the amount reaching a target. Operating at altitude would offer some advantages, but it does not eliminate these effects and is not ideal for many drone and cruise missile targets.

Ultimately, a laser’s nominal power rating tells only part of the story. Beam quality, tracking accuracy, engagement range, atmospheric conditions, and the dwell time required to achieve a kill at various distances are equally important.

Germany’s effort comes as the U.S. military continues to reassess several high-profile directed-energy programs.

American laser weapon initiatives have encountered significant difficulties moving from technology demonstrations toward operational deployment.

The Air Force’s Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD) program was intended to develop a podded laser weapon capable of protecting fighter aircraft against incoming missiles and possibly engage other kinds of targets. Despite considerable development work in recent years, the program ended quietly and unceremoniously without achieving its central objective of demonstrating a complete laser weapon aboard a fighter aircraft.

Another ambitious effort, the Airborne High Energy Laser (AHEL) program, sought to equip the AC-130J Ghostrider gunship with a directed-energy weapon. This would be used against targets on the ground, a potential mission for a future fighter-mounted pod, too. The AHEL effort also encountered technical difficulties, and plans to test the system aboard the aircraft were abandoned.

The Army’s 50-kilowatt Directed Energy Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) program has likewise highlighted the difficulties of integrating high-energy lasers into operational military platforms, particularly in terms of thermal management, power requirements, and reliability. The Army has since had more success with lower-powered LOCUST systems in the counter-drone role, prompting Marine Corps and Navy interest, too. Meanwhile, the Army and Navy continue to push ahead on higher-powered lasers for ground- and ship-based applications.

These experiences underscore the fact that successfully engaging selected targets under controlled conditions is worlds apart from delivering a reliable combat capability.

For the German Defense Ministry and MBDA, the most important milestones will be demonstrating that the laser, beam director, tracking system, power supply, and cooling equipment can operate together within a practical airborne package. Subsequent flight testing and engagements against representative targets would then provide a much clearer indication of its potential.

Germany’s designation of laser technology as a strategic priority since 2019 indicates that the new contract forms part of a longer-term effort to build national expertise in directed-energy weapons.

The German effort comes amid a broader international push to develop directed-energy weapons, with ground-based and naval systems generally further along than airborne applications. In Europe, the United Kingdom is preparing to install its Dragonfire laser aboard a Royal Navy destroyer, while Germany, the Netherlands, and other NATO countries are pursuing laser systems for countering drones and other aerial threats.

China is also investing heavily in directed-energy technology, including mobile ground-based systems and naval lasers. These efforts reflect growing interest in using lasers to counter increasingly numerous and inexpensive threats, but they also highlight the gap between successful demonstrations and reliable operational capabilities.

For Germany, there is a lot of work to be done to bridge the gap between industrial investment, technological demonstrators, strategic prioritization, and deployable, reliable weapons. The experience of U.S. programs provides a reminder that the path from promising laser demonstrations to dependable operational systems is far from certain.

MBDA and the Bundeswehr have taken another step toward an airborne laser capability. But before an airborne laser pod gets close to being fielded, Germany has to overcome the many challenges that have complicated similar efforts elsewhere.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

At least one AeroVironment LOCUST laser counter-drone system is part of the array of anti-air defenses that have popped up around President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in recent weeks. Versions of LOCUST have been seeing steadily increasing use within the U.S. military in recent years, including deployments now along the border with Mexico. Though there has been much progress in the development of practical laser directed-energy weapons in recent years, the technology has continued to face hurdles to more widespread adoption.

The LOCUST system at Mar-a-Lago, which is mounted on a 4×4 Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), is seen in two pictures that Getty’s Andrew Harnik took on October 31. When exactly the laser-directed energy weapon was deployed is unclear. Laser Wars was the first to spot the system in one of Harnik’s pictures and confirm its deployment.

Harnik’s main focus was a pair of Humvee-based AN/TWQ-1 Avenger short-range air defense systems on a floating platform in Lake Worth Lagoon near the edge of the estate, which were first deployed there just over two weeks ago. Additional Avengers have also been positioned around Donald J. Trump International Airport, which is situated some three miles to the west. The U.S. military has also set up elements of Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System Fly-Away Kits, including Ku-band radar, electronic support measures (ESM), jammers, and 360-degree infrared search and track systems nearby. TWZ covered the presence of the Avengers and the Fly-Away Kits in a report last Friday.

This heightened security comes amid signs that a new round of major hostilities with Iran could be on the horizon, as well as the run-up to tomorrow’s mid-term elections. The regime in Tehran has threatened Trump’s life on several occasions over the years. The President has already been the subject of several domestic assassination attempts and threats.

“At the request of the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) and under NORAD [the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command] and USNORTHCOM [U.S. Northern Command] authorities, NORAD and USNORTHCOM recently deployed ground-based air defense [GBAD] assets and Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System capabilities in and around Mar-a-Lago, Florida,” the commands told us in a statement last week. “These assets add a complementary layer of technology to enhance protection. Due to operational security, we are unable to provide additional details. For further detail, we refer you to the USSS.”

“The U.S. Secret Service is operating in a heightened threat environment, and we continuously adapt our protective operations to incorporate cutting-edge tools, technology, and methods to safeguard our protectees,” the Secret Service also told us in a prior statement. “At the request of the U.S. Secret Service, NORAD and U.S. Northern Command are providing Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System capabilities in support of our protective operations.”

The U.S. Army began receiving the JLTV-based versions of LOCUST, along with examples mounted on the smaller 4×4 Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV) last year through a program called the Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL). This followed the delivery of palletized LOCUST systems under a rapid prototyping effort called the Palletized-High Energy Laser (P-HEL) in the early 2020s. The Army is now acquiring LOCUST X3 systems under its Enduring-High Energy Laser (E-HEL) program. LOCUST has become something of a star more broadly within the directed energy space across the U.S. military. The U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Navy have also been exploring the use of versions of LOCUST in ground-based and shipboard contexts.

To date, all versions of LOCUST consist of a turret with the laser beam projector, as well as built-in electro-optical and infrared video cameras for target acquisition and tracking. The complete system also includes power generation and cooling components. LOCUST variants can also be cued using offboard sensors, including small-form-factor high-frequency radars and passive radio frequency signal detection systems on host vehicles or located off-platform nearby, like what the Fly-Away Kit provides.

The stated power rating for LOCUST varies from version to version, with the latest X3 being a 30-kilowatt type. Though the system is categorized as a high-energy laser, this is at the lower end of the power spectrum for weapons of this type, and it is explicitly geared toward the countering small drones mission set. Layering LOCUST in with other hard- and soft-kill counter-drone and air defense systems in a potentially high-threat area, as we are seeing now at Mar-a-Lago, makes good sense.

As mentioned, Mar-a-Lago is not the first time a LOCUST has been deployed in a real-world context. In 2022, the Army confirmed the operational deployment of two P-HEL systems to unspecified foreign locales. Earlier this year, JLTV- and ISV-based AMP-HELs have appeared along the border with Mexico. One of the systems was part of the chain of events that led to the shutdown of airspace around El Paso, Texas, in February. That incident, in turn, prompted the Pentagon to craft a new agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regarding the use of laser directed energy weapons within the United States.

As TWZ has written in the past:

“In general, laser directed energy weapons offer the promise of functionally unlimited magazine depth, as long as there is sufficient power and cooling capacity. They also present a drastically lower cost-per-intercept proposition compared to traditional anti-air interceptors. This is all advantageous for engaging drones, particularly smaller and cheaper designs that can still present very significant threats. The dangers posed by uncrewed aerial systems are only set to grow as networked swarming and automated targeting capabilities, enabled by advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, become more accessible. Defenders already face real risks of just being overwhelmed by attacks involving volumes of drones.”

…

“At the same time, a laser like LOCUST can only engage a single target at once. Lower-powered lasers need to dwell on their targets for a longer period of time in order to cause significant damage by burning a hole in them, as well. This limits the number of targets a single system can engage in a given window of time.”

“In addition, the power of any laser beam drops as it propagates through the atmosphere further and further away from its source. Weather and other environmental factors like smoke and dust can also distort the beam and reduce its power. All of this only adds to the aforementioned dwell time. Adaptive optics, and just more power overall, can help produce useful effects at greater distances, but laser weapons continue to have short ranges, typically measured in handfuls of miles, as a general rule.”

“The Army, as well as other branches of the U.S. military, have repeatedly acknowledged challenges in fielding laser directed energy weapon systems. Sensitivity to vibration, humidity, dust, and sand, as well as fragile optics and cooling demands, have all created further complications for operating and sustaining these systems in real-world environments. “

Army officials just recently touted the benefits of laser directed energy weapons like LOCUST, while also acknowledging again that there is still work to be done at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual convention last month.

“Lasers are real. We can do it. We can go out. We can shoot things,” Kirk Williams, Chief Engineer at the Army’s Directed Energy Project Office, another one of the panelists, said. “But what we got to do now is make these systems reliable enough so that the soldiers have the faith in them when they need them, and that’s really the main point that we’re trying to go after right now.”

“We’re getting to the point where the systems are reliable enough, but we still have to make them maintainable and repairable because this is an Army system,” he continued. “It’s going to be on a battlefield. Things are going to break. We can break things in very creative ways, right? So if it’s not reliable, or if it’s not maintainable, if it’s not repairable, that’s a problem.”

At least one LOCUST system is now participating in a very high-profile mission to help protect President Trump.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The U.S. Army is pursuing a family of modular and scalable laser directed energy weapons that can be fitted to any vehicle in its inventory. The service sees this as key to expanding the operational use of lasers, particularly to provide an extra layer of defense against drone threats, and outside of dedicated units. The Army is already fielding high-energy lasers operationally on a limited basis, including along the border wth Mexico, but the technology has faced continued hurdles to more widespread use in recent years.

Army officials and industry representatives discussed what is currently called the Enduring-High Energy Laser (E-HEL) program during a panel discussion this week at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual convention, at which TWZ was in attendance. In September, AeroVironment received the first production contract under E-HEL to supply examples of its 30-kilowatt-class LOCUST X3 laser directed energy weapon system. The Army has already acquired earlier LOCUST variants, including vehicle-mounted and palletized types, through more experimental programs, and these are the systems now deployed along the southern border. The U.S. Navy has also at least tested a containerized version of LOCUST for shipboard use as part of its own larger laser ambitions.

LOCUST® X3 Modular Directed Energy Laser Weapon System

“We’re focused on any vehicle in the motorpool. I want to try to integrate future capability of high-energy lasers into it,” Army Brig. Gen. Guy Yelverton, the Capability Program Executive for Defensive Fires with the Portfolio Acquisition Executive Office for Fires, said during the panel on Monday. “And, so, our E-HEL is on a sled. With that, I can look at integrating it onto multiple different vehicles.”

“And then, as I think about vehicle agnosticness, if I open up my aperture to MOS [military occupation speciality] agnostic, and ensure that it’s easy to train, easy to operate, I can not just focus on air and missile defense organizations,” he continued. “I can now look at any formation type to be able to put a high-energy laser capability into it for the counter-UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] fight.”

“That gives me even more opportunities to share this capability across all Army formations, and give our senior leaders [the] maximum amount of thought process and input into where the system goes, who the soldier is that’s operating it, and I’ve given them quite a solution,” he added. “It’s a great dilemma to have of where do I put all this capability.”

In 2022, the Army reactivated the 4th Battalion, 60th Air Defense Artillery Regiment (4-60th ADA) at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, as part of plans to field new laser-armed Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) systems based on the 8×8 Stryker light armored vehicle. Reliability and other issues with DE M-SHORAD vehicles led the Army to shift focus, and 4-60th ADA has since assumed a more traditional air defense role. The problems with the DE M-SHORAD system are indicative of struggles that have dogged laser-directed energy weapon developments across the U.S. military, and that have led to several other programs being severely truncated or outright cancelled in recent years.

The Army does now have the aforementioned LOCUST systems, including versions mounted on 4×4 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTV) and Infantry Squad Vehicles (ISV), as well as the palletized types. Those systems appear to be currently fielded on a more ad hoc level to units at forward locations.

LOCUST is well suited to the Army’s current vision for fielding E-HEL without being tied to specific vehicles or unit types. At the core of the system is a turret with the laser beam projector, as well as built-in electro-optical and infrared video cameras for target acquisition and tracking. Other sensors, such as small-form-factor high-frequency radars and passive radio frequency signal detection systems on host vehicles, as well as off-board radars and other capabilities positioned elsewhere, can be used to cue the turret.

With the 30-kilowatt power rating, the new X3 versions of LOCUST the Army is acquiring now are still at the lower end of the power spectrum for laser directed energy weapons. All versions of LOCUST to date are geared explicitly toward countering small drones.

It is possible that the Army could field other types of laser directed energy weapon systems through E-HEL in the future. The service, in cooperation with other branches of the U.S. military, is also pursuing designs with far higher power ratings through separate programs.

Just being able to field LOCUST X3 more broadly would still offer valuable additional layers of defense against drones across different types of Army units. More broadly speaking, the central benefit that laser directed energy weapons offer is the promise of functionally unlimited magazine depth, though this is dependent on there being sufficient power and cooling capacity. This, in turn, translates to a substantial reduction in the cost-per-intercept equation compared to traditional anti-air interceptors. All of this is especially advantageous for tackling drone threats, which do not have to be large or expensive to present real dangers.

By miniaturizing and ruggedizing lower-power systems like LOCUST, the Army could distribute these capabilities across a broad area, or deploy them in a more concentrated fashion, depending on the fight. Even a convoy with a number of the vehicles sprinkled in with them could help defend it from pop-up attacks

In this context, mobility and flexibility are also important boons. LOCUST systems mounted on light vehicles can be readily positioned and repositioned to respond to changes on the battlefield, as well as be brought to forward locations slung under helicopters. Palletized and containerized versions offer additional kinds of flexibility for providing point defense at sites on land, as well as installation on ships.

At the panel on Monday, Brig. Gen. Yelverton stressed that when it comes to laser weapons systems, in general, the technology is no longer a matter of “science fiction” but has become “science reality.” The U.S. military says laser systems positioned along the border with Mexico have downed real targets, though many questions remain about those deployments. Regardless, challenges do clearly remain.

“Lasers are real. We can do it. We can go out. We can shoot things,” Kirk Williams, Chief Engineer at the Army’s Directed Energy Project Office, another one of the panelists, said. “But what we got to do now is make these systems reliable enough so that the soldiers have the faith in them when they need them, and that’s really the main point that we’re trying to go after right now.”

“We’re getting to the point where the systems are reliable enough, but we still have to make them maintainable and repairable because this is an Army system,” he continued. “It’s going to be on a battlefield. Things are going to break. We can break things in very creative ways, right? So if it’s not reliable, or if it’s not maintainable, if it’s not repairable, that’s a problem.”

“We’re also looking to reduce size, weight, and power,” he added. “JLTV has a lot better payload capacity than ISV. So we really need to be able to get something smaller if we want to have the same effectiveness on an ISV. So that same modular architecture will allow us to go in, take some of those components, make trade-offs.”

The focus on modular and open systems architectures will also help when it comes to integrating new and improved functionality down the line. It will also feed into the larger goal of having E-HEL options not tied to a particular vehicle or other platform.

“By going after the modular architecture, that gives us the flexibility to not only go after increases in reliability, but also increases in performance,” Williams further explained. “It gives us the way to inject new technology into existing systems, and then hopefully it also gives us a way of getting better prices out of some of our vendors.”

In addition, “one of the things we learned is you can have a really cool integrated system, and then when that truck needs an oil change, well, then your laser weapon system is down for the count,” he added. “So, trying to make it so that you can just pull it off of any vehicle, put it on any other vehicle is really one of the things that we’re trying to go after.”

The Army is also very cognizant of the basic fact that a single laser can only engage one target at once. The beam from any laser weapon system also drops in power as it gets further from the source, just because of the need to propagate through the atmosphere. Weather and other environmental conditions like smoke and dust then also become a factor. This has driven demand for more power (and cooling capacity) to improve effectiveness, especially at range. Developments in adaptive optics can also help overcome these issues to a degree, but lasers currently remain very short-range weapons overall.

“That’s why it’s important to us to get enough energy on the target to kill it as quickly as possible and move on to the next threat. Speaking about the magazine, you know I have battery power on there, so depending upon which system, around 80 seconds, 120 seconds, whatever that is, you know that’s the magazine depth I have,” Brig. Gen. Yelverton said on Monday. “The quicker I get on the target, kill it, and off the target, I start rebuilding, regenerating that magazine depth.”

“It’s the targeting system. It’s the optics system that lets you focus on the target,” Williams also chimed in at this point on the panel discussion. “I mentioned trying to make the trackers better and take some of the onus off of the operator. If we can do better aim point control and keep the laser in the same spot, it gives you a better and a quicker kill.”

Earlier on, Williams had highlighted how artificial intelligence-assisted targeting capabilities could be a particularly important addition to laser directed energy weapons. Networking multiple systems together could help with sorting and assigning targets as efficiently as possible.

When it comes to the actual operational employment of laser directed energy weapons, “as these systems get smaller, as they get more powerful, the quicker we could get them into our soldiers’ hands,” Army Col. Charles Kean, Deputy Commanding Officer for Support at the 7th Infantry Division at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, another one of the panelists, said.

This, in turn, will open up important new opportunities to “operate with them forward, test them in the mud, the dirt, the humidity of the Pacific, test them down in the southern border where they’re different conditions, whether it’s in the Middle East and Europe, it’s applicable across the board,” Kean continued. “We have to understand it, get it in our hands as quickly as possible, so we could iterate it, iterate on it, and make it better and continue to iterate, because the adversaries continue to iterate in reverse against us.”

This last point is worth highlighting. The U.S. military’s chief global competitor, China, has been particularly active in the development and fielding of ground-based laser and other directed energy weapons, as well as designs for shipboard use. Chinese firms are selling laser weapon systems to foreign armed forces, as well. Other countries, including American allies and partners, are also very actively pursuing these capabilities.

Col. Kean also stressed that laser directed energy weapons would still only be one part of a larger layered air and missile defense ecosystem for the Army.

As it stands now, the Army hopes to have the first LOCUST X3 systems acquired through E-HEL in operational service by early 2028. A similar timeframe has been put forward for the separate Joint Laser Weapon System (JLWS) program, which the Army is also involved in. JLWS is aiming to produce a viable containerized 150-kilowatt-class laser directed energy weapon, with plans to work toward 300- and 500-kilowatt-class designs. At the panel on Monday, Scott Keeney, CEO of laser systems developer nLIGHT, which has been working together with AeroVironment on LOCUST, among other projects, said he saw further scaling up of capabilities to the one-megawatt-class as being on the horizon. This is a power rating the U.S. Navy has also talked about as a future goal.

The Army clearly sees E-HEL already as a path to truly operationalizing laser directed energy capabilities across the system, but the service itself acknowledges that there is still significant work to be done to make this goal a reality.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com