High-energy lasers are increasingly viewed as the most cost-effective way to defend against drones and missiles launched by Iran at oil refineries and U.S. bases across the Middle East. Shooting a laser is cheap — as little as $3.50 a shot, according to some estimates — compared with systems, like Patriot missile interceptors, that can cost more than $3 million per shot to neutralize a drone.
President Trump told reporters this week that lasers would soon be able to do the work of Patriot missile interceptors “at a lot less cost.”
“The laser technology that we have now is incredible,” he said. “It’s coming out pretty soon.”
The idea of using lasers this way isn’t new. American military leaders have spent decades trying to develop this technology, pursuing a dream of a weapon that can hit a target at the speed of light and never run out of ammunition.
Other countries, including Israel and China, have deployed high-powered lasers of their own. But the U.S. military faces significant challenges in its attempts to build and deploy them at scale. Experts in the industry said it could be years before American soldiers used lasers this way.
How do these lasers work?
High-energy lasers concentrate beams of light on a drone’s weak spots, frying its components like “a blowtorch at a distance,” said David Stoudt, executive director of the Directed Energy Professional Society, who helped invent a device to counter improvised explosive devices in Iraq.
Like a magnifying glass that is used to focus the sun’s rays to start a fire, lasers must lock on a drone for a period of time — three seconds or longer, under cloudy conditions — raising questions about their effectiveness in inclement weather or against a swarm of drones.
“This isn’t ‘Star Trek,’ where your target is disintegrated instantaneously,” said Jared Keller, author of the Laser Wars newsletter on military technology. “Lasers aren’t magic. They run headlong into physics wherever they are operating.”
How effective are these laser systems?
High-energy lasers are powerful weapons under the right conditions, but they are not silver bullets. Humidity can bend rays of light in unpredictable ways. Fog can stop laser beams from reaching their targets. Sea spray and sand can damage highly sensitive optical components, making these weapons tricky to use or quickly repair in the field.
Four 50-kilowatt lasers were deployed to defend U.S. bases in Iraq from drone attacks in 2024, but soldiers found using the weapons “cumbersome and ineffective,” according to a report by Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank.
Scott Keeney, chief executive and co-founder of nLight, a company in Camas, Wash., that produces lasers for both military and industrial purposes, said laser technology had made great strides but should not be oversold.
“It is being used, and it will be used in more and more applications,” he said. “But lasers are not the solution in every environment at all times. No one should be saying that.”
A 100-kilowatt laser contains half the horsepower of an average car, Mr. Keeney said. Yet when concentrated into a narrow beam, it’s powerful enough to damage a plane’s engine.
The use of lasers as weapons also has the potential to wreak havoc on civilian life, as the recent closure of an airport in El Paso illustrates. Pointing a laser at an aircraft can incapacitate a pilot, endangering passengers. Nearly 11,000 laser incidents were reported to the Federal Aviation Administration last year.
Are other countries using lasers to counter drones or missiles?
Israel has been experimenting with lasers. A system called Iron Beam, manufactured by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, an Israeli company, has been hailed as a technological breakthrough. But Israeli officials say the latest version of Iron Beam, a 100-kilowatt laser that the company delivered in December, is not ready for use in the current war, according to The Jerusalem Post.
In December, Electro Optic Systems, an Australian defense contractor, struck a deal to provide a 100-kilowatt laser to South Korea. And Ukrainians have been attracting international attention for the Sunray, a laser small enough to fit in the trunk of a car, according to The Atlantic.
China unveiled its own 180-kilowatt laser, the LY-1, aboard a ship in September.
How much do they cost?
It may be inexpensive to fire high-energy lasers, but the systems that contain them can cost a fortune. Lockheed Martin was awarded a $150 million contract in 2018 to build two prototypes. The result was a ship-mounted, 60-kilowatt system, High Energy Laser With Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance, or HELIOS, which is deployed on the destroyer Preble in Japan.
The Navy is still evaluating how well the system’s delicate optical components hold up against long-term exposure to saltwater and humidity, according to people familiar with the matter.
Some media reports have misidentified a laser aboard a ship in the Persian Gulf as HELIOS, but that was actually ODIN, a less powerful weapon that disorients drones with dazzling beams of light but doesn’t destroy them, Mr. Keller said.
The hefty price tag of HELIOS prompted Emil Michael, under secretary of defense for research and engineering, to encourage smaller companies to compete for laser contracts last year. He designated “scaled directed energy” — which includes lasers and powerful microwaves — as one of six critical priorities for the Defense Department.
Under a $35 million contract, Mr. Keeney’s company, nLight, recently delivered to the Army a laser that can produce 70 kilowatts of power.
Does the United States have the materials to make them?
Manufacturing at scale could pose additional challenges.
High-energy lasers amplify light by adding impurities to glass with rare-earth metals such as ytterbium, which is tightly controlled by China, according to a 2024 report by the National Defense Industrial Association, a nonprofit association of defense suppliers.
High-performance lasers also use semiconductors made with gallium, a rare-earth metal largely produced in China.
Manufacturers “can only produce small numbers of systems with long lead times,” the report said of the laser systems. It added, “Efforts to scale up production would quickly run into issues including producing optical components (e.g., diffraction gratings, mirrors, and lenses), beam directors, batteries.”
Farah Stockman is a Times business reporter writing about manufacturing and the government policies that influence companies that make things in the United States.
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