{"id":67520,"date":"2024-08-12T20:36:26","date_gmt":"2024-08-12T20:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2024\/08\/12\/armys-high-energy-laser-competition-to-kick-off-early-next-year\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T01:11:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T01:11:33","slug":"armys-high-energy-laser-competition-to-kick-off-early-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/digital-show-dailies\/smd\/2024\/08\/12\/armys-high-energy-laser-competition-to-kick-off-early-next-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Army\u2019s high-energy laser competition to kick off early next year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">HUNTSVILLE, Ala. \u2014 The U.S. Army plans to choose a few teams from a larger pool to compete to develop its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/industry\/techwatch\/2024\/03\/29\/us-army-refreshes-competition-for-short-range-laser\/\" target=\"_blank\">Enduring High Energy Laser, or HEL, system<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/industry\/techwatch\/2024\/03\/29\/us-army-refreshes-competition-for-short-range-laser\/\" target=\"_blank\"> for short-range air defense<\/a> in early 2025, Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch, the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office director, said last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Army will carry teams through design and development and plans to select a winner to build an enduring HEL for short-range air defense in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, according to a broad agency announcement for the effort posted to <a href=\"http:\/\/sam.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sam.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The service held an industry day in July and has been collecting proposals with \u201ca lot of interest from those industry partners we\u2019ve seen and some that we hadn\u2019t necessarily seen before,\u201d Rasch told Defense News in an interview at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSome of them are teaming up together. Some of them are on their own. But they see what other folks are doing and trying to get better,\u201d Rasch added. \u201cThat is where innovation occurs and that\u2019s where we maintain that leap ahead capability over our adversaries.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The service has spent years developing lasers for various weapons systems and recently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/battlefield-tech\/directed-energy\/2024\/03\/22\/us-testing-stryker-mounted-lasers-in-iraq-amid-middle-east-drone-boom\/\" target=\"_blank\">deployed four Directed Energy Maneuver-SHORAD Stryker Combat Vehicle-based prototypes to the U.S. Central Command <\/a>area of operations to evaluate how well a 50-kilowatt laser could fulfill the mission of taking out short-range air threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2023\/04\/13\/army-short-range-air-defense-laser-prototypes-take-down-drones-at-yuma\/\" target=\"_blank\">first prototypes consist of a 50-kilowatt laser <\/a>from Raytheon. Kord Technologies, a KBR company, is the lead integrator.<\/p>\n\n\n\t<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/land\/2021\/08\/18\/northrop-bows-out-of-competition-to-build-laser-weapon-for-strykers\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__media\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" src=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Stryker-MMHEL-comp-26.jpg.jpg?w=300\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__image wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__content\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"smg-interstitial-link__kicker\">Related<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<h3 class=\"smg-interstitial-link__title\">Northrop bows out of competition to build laser weapon for Strykers<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"smg-interstitial-link__excerpt\">A Northrop Grumman team competing to integrate a 50-kilowatt laser onto a Stryker combat vehicle ran into issues ahead of a combat shoot-off this summer, which resulted in an early exit from the program.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rasch said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2019\/08\/01\/northrop-and-raytheon-to-compete-to-build-laser-weapon-for-short-range-air-defense\/\" target=\"_blank\">those prototypes<\/a>, and other efforts like putting larger lasers on palletized weapon systems and smaller lasers on the Infantry Squad Vehicle and the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, have taught the service what could potentially be the sweet spot for balancing laser power needs with other factors that play into taking out enemy air drones of various sizes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rasch\u2019s office is currently evaluating 10-, 20-, 50- and 300-kilowatt options for a wide variety of threats and missions. The 300-kilowatt laser is designed for the Indirect Fire Protection Capability, which is a system that will use kinetic, laser and high-powered microwave weapons to destroy threats including rockets, artillery, mortars, drones and cruise missiles. The Army is to receive that laser weapon next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat informed the Enduring High Energy Laser [broad agency announcement] that we put out,\u201d Rasch said. \u201cYou\u2019ll notice\u2026 that we didn\u2019t reference kilowatts, right? It\u2019s easy to talk about lasers in regards to kilowatts because it\u2019s easy to get your head wrapped around more kilowatts, probably better, less kilowatts, probably not as effective or lethal, but that\u2019s only one factor that comes into how effective the system is downrange.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For example, Rasch noted, a 50-kilowatt system might not have an ideal beam director \u201cso it\u2019s not making all the proper utilization of beam forming and getting that power down range. You might not be as effective as a 30-kilowatt, so there\u2019s multiple components and multiple levers\u2026 that come into play.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The extensive evaluations have led the Army to see \u201chow those systems perform from the different designs at the system level and at the component level and sub-component level. It\u2019s really, I think, opened up the aperture on what we know about how to make effective laser systems,\u201d Rasch said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Army has also learned about what will be needed to sustain directed energy systems in the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s a big step to go from lab demonstration of a capability or even taking it out to a range for a week or two to giving it to soldiers for good and then having them take it, quite frankly, in some of the most austere places that you would ever want to put equipment,\u201d Rasch said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe\u2019ve actually made some big inroads on how to do sustainment repairs in a really ugly environment where dust particles are really high,\u201d he added. \u201cUltimately we want to get these systems to \u2026 where your soldiers can pull out a piece and put in another piece in a fight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In addition to the four prototypes already downrange, Rasch\u2019s office will soon receive prototypes from two additional teams \u2013 Lockheed Martin and nLight \u2013 each offering different design solutions, which the office will evaluate over the next several years in addition to the original DE M-SHORAD prototyping effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US Army&#8217;s directed energy solution for short-range air defense continues to be refined through a variety of competitive prototyping efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":113240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":99,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"9":{"categories":["directed-energy","battlefield-tech"],"primary_category":"directed-energy"}}},"categories":[37,160,29,12,14,36,99],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3330],"class_list":["post-67520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-daily-news-roundup","category-digital-show-dailies","category-industry","category-land","category-newsletters","category-smd"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"IQGN4UYAQRG53EVCRBL2DQ73B4","arc_canonical_url":"\/digital-show-dailies\/smd\/2024\/08\/12\/armys-high-energy-laser-competition-to-kick-off-early-next-year\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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