Army Bets $464,800,000 On Drone-Killing Lasers That Cost Under $10 A Shot

The Army is moving to field a new drone-killing laser — and one company is already showing how it could be powered in the field.

AeroVironment won a $464.8 million Army contract in September for its LOCUST X3 laser, and the company said in a Sept. 8 release that its LOCUST laser system “delivers engagements for less than $10 per shot.” Army officials said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting in Washington that the first LOCUST X3 could be ready to counter drones by early 2028, Military Times reported.

“We’re moving from science fiction to science reality,” John Garrity, AeroVironment’s vice president of directed energy systems, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“This first of its kind directed energy program will enable our formations to defeat unmanned systems and dominate from the outset,” Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Army’s vice chief of staff, said in a Sept. 2 Army release that called the award the service’s first contract to produce a high-energy laser weapon.

The laser runs on electricity and has “a magazine that regenerates with the system’s power supply,” according to the release.

“Directed energy weapons have been considered S&T [science and technology] projects, and I’m proud that the Army is moving at speed and scale to deliver this first time capability,” Brent Ingraham, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said in the release.

Missiles that can cost $500,000 to $1 million are fired at drones that cost a few thousand dollars or less, and “even though we’re successful in taking those out, we’re still losing,” Garrity added. Lasers “really push that economic cost curve in the right direction for the first time reliably.”

Each laser shot costs “less than a cup of coffee” in energy, Garrity said, and the under-$10 figure is essentially the cost of that electricity. He said a laser’s upfront cost is about even with other counter-drone weapons, some of which need expensive radars, and that it comes out ahead after bringing down a single drone.

A hybrid truck built by Harbinger, a California maker of electric and hybrid truck chassis, powered a LOCUST X3 at American Rheinmetall’s booth during the meeting, Defence Blog reported. The LOCUST X3 is a 30-kilowatt laser, according to AeroVironment’s September contract release.