US Navy's New Joint Laser Weapon System Targets Cruise Missile Threats in $676M Program

MOSCOW, April 30. /TASS/. The newest laser system, the Joint Laser Weapon System (JLWS), which is expected to become part of the American "Golden Dome" air and missile defense (A&M) infrastructure, will be designed to counter cruise missiles, according to the US Navy's fiscal 2027 budget request. According to the documents, the "new Joint Laser Weapon System — a collaboration between the US Army and US Navy that Laser first reported about in June 2025 — will initially consist of a containerized 150-kilowatt system with the potential to scale to at least 300kw to defeat incoming cruise missile threats." Moreover, according to the request, the JLWS should also include a Joint Beam Control System (JBCS), "capable of supporting" a potential output power of 300-500 kW. The US Army announced it did not intend to order production samples of the 300-kilowatt IFPC-HEL (Indirect Fire Protection Capability - High Energy Laser) system developed by Lockheed Martin. At that time, it was stated that the development of the JLWS would draw on the corporation's experience, including its work on the 60-kilowatt HELIOS (High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-Dazzler and Surveillance) naval laser. A prototype is currently installed on the destroyer USS Preble (DDG-88). Furthermore, according to budget documents, the US Navy is upgrading another laser system, the High Energy Laser Counter Anti-Ship Cruise Missile Project (HELCAP). It is essentially a testbed for improving this type of technology, which will also be used in the JLWS. In total, the command plans to spend nearly $95 million on these projects in fiscal year 2027. The Navy intends to invest an additional $243.3 million in the program through fiscal year 2031. Combined with the $337.8 million requested by the US Army for the initiative through 2031, the total five-year budget for the program could reach nearly $676 million. The Navy plans to begin awarding the first contracts to private contractors for the development of the JBCS system this summer. According to budget documents, contracts for the JLWS and its testing are to be signed by March of next year. According to the weekly Defense News, all of these contracts will likely go to Lockheed Martin. In addition to the aforementioned items, the Pentagon's budget request for the upcoming reporting period included a $452 million line item for a research and development program related to the development of a laser for Golden Dome. However, as the weekly noted, there was no direct indication that this was directly related to the JLWS. Meanwhile, the US government has requested $17.9 billion from Congress for the development of the Golden Dome air and missile defense infrastructure in the upcoming fiscal year. A record $185 billion is currently planned for its creation through 2035. Age-old song As Defense News put it, "The dream of a laser weapon capable of shooting down cruise missiles is nearly as old as the laser itself." In the 1970s, the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) first demonstrated a prototype of the Navy ARPA Chemical Laser (NACL), which used deuterium fluoride. During testing, it was able to shoot down several small missile-type targets. However, its design was too complex and its dimensions too large, making it unsuitable for military use. The same was true of the NACL's successor, the Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser (MIRACL). However, this prototype also managed to shoot down a supersonic MQM-8 Vandal missile in 1989. Interest in laser weapons in the United States increased with the start of the Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s. At that time, the Air Force command conceived the idea of creating a similar air-based system. However, the program, which lasted nearly 20 years until 2012, failed. Over $5 billion was spent on it. The new decade brought new laser weapons programs, of which there are about a dozen. One of them, involving Lockheed Martin and the US Navy's specialized command, was designed to validate the laser weapon concept in conditions close to real operational situations. A prototype system was tested in 2022 at the White Sands Missile Range (New Mexico). During the test, the laser successfully intercepted a drone simulating a subsonic cruise missile. According to Defense News, the Pentagon sincerely believes that the JLWS will be the last, and this time, a successful, attempt to develop a laser capable of countering cruise missiles. However, as Laser Wars points out, while the idea of shooting down drones with such systems still has some merit, it will be much more difficult to implement against cruise missiles. The problem is that cruise missiles fly at high speed and low altitude, hugging terrain and performing evasive maneuvers, making them extremely difficult targets to intercept. Furthermore, cruise missiles typically have reinforced hulls, which require significantly more energy to destroy than a drone—a task that today's tactical laser systems have more or less mastered. Atmospheric phenomena, which can absorb or refract laser beams and prevent the laser from hitting a target, further complicate the situation. Even at 300 kW, beam aiming and focusing accuracy must be extremely high for the laser to be effective. Laser Wars claims that none of the current developments in this field possess such capabilities.