Breaking Defense

With adversaries amassing long-range precision weapons, the Army is asking Congress for more than $1 billion in 2021 to develop hypersonic missiles for offense and missile-killing lasers for defense. Hypersonics funding is up 86 percent from last year and high energy lasers soared a stunning 209 percent.

The aim of all this money is to move technology out of the lab and into mass production, so the service can field its first 50-kilowatt lasers on Stryker armored vehicles in 2022, its first truck-launched hypersonics in 2023, and truck-mounted lasers in the 100-300 kW class in 2024.

The Army wants these technologies so urgently it’s devoted a unique unit to developing them, the Rapid Capabilities & Critical Technologies Office. RCCTO’s priority is so high that its director, Lt. Gen. Neil Thurgood, told me he speaks to the Amy’s civilian acquisition executive, Bruce Jette, and the head of Army Futures Command, Gen. John “Mike” Murray, “multiple times a week, sometimes multiple times a day.” As for the Army’s top four leaders – Sec. Ryan McCarthy, Undersec. James McPherson, Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville, and Vice-Chief Gen. Joseph Martin – Thurgood meets with them “multiple times throughout the month.”

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