Defense News:
The Army’s future air-and-missile defense capabilities are taking shape under the newest Space and Missile Defense commander, Lt. Gen. James Dickinson, particularly in laser-armed combat vehicles and the Integrated Air-and-Missile Defense system (IAMD), both considered to be crucial enablers for the maneuver force.
How the Army will employ laser weapons in combat and what the IAMD system will look like are at a crossroads, with decisions on paths forward expected in the upcoming years. The SMDC is leading the Army’s high-energy laser science and technology efforts that would provide the service with a low-cost, but effective complement to kinetic energy solutions to take out air threats.
The Army has long said it needs to develop interceptors that don’t cost $1 million a shot to take out unsophisticated low-cost targets like small, unmanned aircraft systems.
“Now we’ve got something, quite frankly, that we used to see on TV and in cartoons, and it’s a reality with these high-energy lasers,” Dickinson told Defense News in a recent interview.
The command has, very rapidly, affixed a 5-kilowatt laser on a Stryker combat vehicle, which has been successful in recent demonstrations, he said.
The Mobile Expeditionary High-Energy Laser (MEHEL) participated in the Maneuver Fires Integrated Experiment (MFIX) 2016 with a 2-kilowatt laser and a 10-centimeter beam director strapped onto a Stryker. In a four-month period before MFIX 2017, a radar, an electronic warfare capability and fire support were also installed on the same Stryker and the laser was upgraded to 5 kw.
