Lockheed Martin’s SHiELD is one of many directed energy weapon concepts out there. (Lockheed Martin)

It’s an old joke in defense circles that laser weapons are the technology of the future, and always will be. But for Pentagon planners, the dream of directed energy capabilities does, finally, seem to be transitioning to reality. In a new analysis, however, Joe Shepherd, vice president of directed energy innovation at Booz Allen Hamilton, argues that the department may be putting its money into the wrong area of study for this crucial capability. 

Most of the Pentagon’s current research in directed energy weapons concerns continuous-wave lasers, which use a relatively low-power, high-energy beam to burn out optical sensors or gradually cause other material damage. But defense leaders are increasingly interested in ultrashort pulse lasers (USPLs), unimaginably high-powered beams fired for a tiny fraction of a second to vaporize a small portion of a target’s surface or disrupt its electronics.

As the US military searches for new air defense layers to ward off drone swarms and hypersonic missiles, it should put more funding toward realizing the promise of USPLs.

The intense nature of USPL beams — a trillion watts fired for one-quadrillionth of a second — offers both benefits and obstacles. While kilowatt-class continuous-wave beams become more diffuse as they pass through the atmosphere, a far-more-intense USPL beam breaks down molecules and ionizes nitrogen and oxygen atoms. This creates a kind of plasma channel that keeps the beam focused and effective over a longer range.

But a USPL beam also turns a small portion of its target’s surface to plasma. Unless this new plasma is given time to dissipate, it will act like a shield against subsequent pulses. This effect has been the subject of study for decades, but there is research underway to examine whether a string of pulses fired in very short succession can hit a fast-moving airborne target before the shield can form.

As with other forms of directed energy, development is needed to reduce the size, weight, power needs, cooling, and cost of USPL. The world’s three most advanced USPL systems, developed through the Extreme Light Infrastructure initiative in Europe, are each the size of a building. The ones at research universities such as the University of Nebraska and the University of Central Florida are made up of several optical benches, each weighing a ton. Still, Stanford University’s Linear Accelerator Laboratory and University of Nebraska’s Extreme Light Laboratory are finding ways to make USPL and other directed-energy systems smaller and more powerful.

RELATED: UK Awards Laser Weapon Experimental Contracts

As is the case with many nascent cutting-edge technologies, significant time and money is spent on basic and applied research — mainly in academia and national labs — to raise the readiness level of the underlying technology. This is certainly true for USPL capabilities. We envision that as more mature laser applications (e.g. solid-state and continuous wave) become an accepted part of our warfighters’ arsenal, so too will promising technologies such as USPL. And with that demand will come the focused efforts for related advanced technology development and advanced component development, to include operational prototypes. All of this is conceivable on a 10-15 year horizon.

The United States has been a leader in directed-energy research for decades; the world’s first petawatt laser was developed at the National Ignition Facility, and the Department of Energy sponsored USPL development at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. But much of the current growth in USPL research and development right now is in Europe, with the ELI consortium of research centers, and in Asia, with a new multi-petawatt laser center breaking ground in Shanghai. It is vital that US leadership be maintained, as the first nation to effectively bring this technology to the field will hold a distinct military advantage.

Part of the answer is more money. While national funding for USPLs has been steadily increasing in Europe and Asia, budgets have been flat or declining in the United States. The Pentagon’s 2022 budget request would decrease funding for directed-energy research from roughly $1.2 billion this year to $915 million in the next. Instead, we should increase directed-energy funding to $2 billion. This would signal our nation’s commitment and incentivize industry and academia to conduct ever more groundbreaking work in this field.

Only with sustained, focused commitment can America realize USPL’s potential in the battlefield and provide the necessary layers of an effective national defense apparatus critical to the protection of our interests and safety.

Joe Shepherd is Vice President of Directed Energy Innovation at Booz Allen Hamilton.