The Pentagon says laser weapons are nearly ready for prime time

This article is republished with permission from Laser Wars , a newsletter about military laser weapons and other futuristic defense technology. The U.S. military is pushing to demonstrate high-energy laser weapons engineered for fielding at scale in the next two years, according to the U.S. Defense Department’s top science and technology official. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee on May 19, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, Emil Michael, told lawmakers that the science of laser weapons “is largely done.” He said the Pentagon is focused on addressing the engineering challenges that come with transforming exquisite prototypes into mass-producible capabilities—the “scaled” element of the department’s “ scaled directed energy ” critical technology area. “We now have a suite of directed energy products that go from low end to high end, and now we have to scale production of those,” Michael said . When questioned by Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., about the three-year timeline for fielding laser weapons at scale that defense officials previously publicized in March, Michael stated that President Donald Trump’s planned “ Golden Dome for America “ domestic missile shield would accelerate those research and development efforts due to the initiative’s “big reliance” on directed energy. He added, “Our experience in Iran has also doubled our interest in these systems.” “A lot of the money allocated to Golden Dome is going to go to the fundamental engineering of these systems so that we can make them cheaper, smaller, and more proliferated,” Michael said . “And because the commitment was made to the president that we’re going to have a demonstration that includes directed energy in our Golden Dome architecture, there’s a lot of energy going into that.” The directed energy demonstration is expected to occur during the summer of 2028, Michael said, part of a series of Golden Dome-related ev