In that position, Michael will serve as the primary advisor to the secretary of defense and other Defense Department leaders on tech development and transition, prototyping, experimentation, and management of testing ranges and activities. He’ll also be in charge of synchronizing science and technology efforts across the DOD.

Michael comes to the job from the private sector, where he’s been a business executive, advisor and investor. He told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that he’s been involved with more than 50 different tech companies during his career. Perhaps most notable, from 2013 to 2017, he was chief business officer at Uber.

In government, he previously served as special assistant to the secretary of defense when Robert Gates was Pentagon chief.

Michael was born in Egypt and his family moved to the United States when he was a child to escape what he described as hostility to Christians.

“Emil has lived the American Dream by building several successful Tech companies, including Uber,” then President-elect Donald Trump said in a statement in December when he announced his pick for Pentagon R&E chief, adding that Michael will “ensure that our Military has the most technologically sophisticated weapons in the World, while saving A LOT of money for our Taxpayers.”

Michael touted his business background during his confirmation hearing in March and in responses to written questions from senators. He noted that he previously served on the Defense Business Board, which provides independent advice to Pentagon leaders on business management issues.

“I am a firm believer that bringing best practices from the private sector into the Department is a top priority because, if adopted effectively, they will streamline operation and allocate resources more appropriately,” Michael told lawmakers.

He suggested that some research and development programs could end up on the chopping block under his watch, saying Pentagon officials need to have the discipline to “stop projects that are failing” and focus S&T investments on “only those things that are aligned on our ‘peace through strength’ mission.”

“Time must be a factor in all of our decisions as we confront an increasingly sophisticated adversary in China, which not only has lower labor costs, but is notorious for intellectual property theft, making its research and development … even faster and less expensive than we could have imagined only a decade ago,” he said.

Michael also told senators that he would work to “recast” the relationship between the Defense Department and the emerging tech sector.

“The DOD needs to foster a more robust and competitive defense industrial base by providing more realistic requirements, inviting smaller and innovative companies with less burdensome processes, becoming more agile in how and when we grant contracts. The private sector too should bear some more responsibility for the risks of their own failure. A healthy ecosystem will provide for weapons that are better, cheaper and faster,” he said at his confirmation hearing.

He suggested venture capitalists could play an even larger role in supporting the defense industrial base, particularly for small businesses that need additional funding to thrive in that marketplace. For example, he told lawmakers that, if confirmed, he would look for opportunities under Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) programs for small businesses to leverage VC investment.

The Pentagon’s R&E chief plays a key role in fostering next-generation military capabilities and overseeing work on the “critical technology areas” that the Pentagon has identified. Those areas currently include trusted AI and autonomy; space; integrated sensing and cyber; integrated network systems of systems; microelectronics; human-machine interfaces; advanced materials; directed energy; advanced computing and software; hypersonics; biotech; quantum; FutureG wireless tech; and “energy resilience.”

“If confirmed, I look forward to reviewing the work being done in all 14 Critical Technology Areas and ensuring the Department’s resources are focused on our most critical challenges with the right amount of weight behind each area,” Michael told lawmakers.

He highlighted AI, autonomous systems, quantum computing, directed energy and hypersonics as some of his top priorities, if confirmed.

The R&E directorate is also expected to play a major role in Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative.

Michael noted that Golden Dome will require systems engineers across the DOD to collaborate on architecture and software, in partnership with the development and acquisition communities.

After he’s sworn in, Michael will take over for James Mazol, who has been performing the duties of undersecretary for R&E during the early months of the second Trump administration. Heidi Shyu was the last person to hold the role in a Senate-confirmed capacity during the Biden administration.

Updated on May 15, 2025, at 4:15 PM: A previous version of this story stated that “renewable energy generation and storage” was one of DOD’s 14 “critical technology areas.” While that was the case during the Biden administration, the Trump administration has changed the focus to “energy resilience.” This story has been updated to reflect that change.

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The Royal Artillery Trials and Development Unit and 7 Air Defence Group “successfully targeted and engaged” uncrewed aerial systems with the “Radio Frequency Directed Energy Weapon” at a range in West Wales, the MOD said in a press release Monday. “The user experimentation trials completed in recent months have enabled Army air defence personnel to explore and exercise the capability’s potential in different configurations across a variety of range environments, threat types and engagement scenarios.”

The effort comes as many nations, including the United States, are in search of new tools to defeat large numbers of drones without firing expensive missiles at them.

Pentagon officials have highlighted the U.S. military’s defensive operations in the Middle East region against Houthi and Iranian UAS over the past year as indicators of the need for more cost-effective solutions.

Other events in recent weeks have raised concerns about mysterious drones near military bases.

For example, last month, U.S. and U.K. military personnel were actively monitoring installations around and airspace over Royal Air Force Lakenheath, RAF Mildenhall, RAF Feltwell and RAF Fairford for small UAS that were repeatedly spotted near those facilities. Earlier this month, mysterious drones were also sighted in New Jersey over Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle.

In May, the U.K. MOD put out a release noting that a new Radio Frequency Directed Energy Weapon (RFDEW) was under development.

The demonstrator platform that was recently tested was built by a Thales-led consortium that includes subcontractors such as QinetiQ, Teledyne e2v and Horiba Mira. The industry team was awarded a contract for the technology by the MOD’s Defence Equipment and Support organization and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, according to a press release issued Monday.

The system is designed to detect, track and attack a variety of targets and provide the ability to engage them up to 1 kilometer away.

“The weapon uses high frequency waves to disrupt or damage critical electronic components inside devices such as drones, causing them to be immobilised or fall out of the sky,” per the release, which noted that the technology can also be used against threats in other warfighting domains such as land and sea.

The capability only costs 10 pence — or about 13 cents — per shot, according to the MOD.

“Its high level of automation means the system can be operated by a single person and could be mounted onto a military vehicle … to provide mobility,” officials wrote in a release.

In a statement, Maria Eagle MP, minister for defence procurement and industry, said the successful test marked “another step forward for a potentially game-changing sovereign weapon for the UK.”

Officials plan to continue to work with operators to refine these types of technologies and develop requirements and doctrine.

On a company website, Thales referred to its RFDEW by name as RapidDestroyer.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military is also reaching out to industry as it looks for new directed energy weapons that can take down enemy drones.

For example, Epirus has been developing a high-power microwave weapon prototype, known as Leonidas Expeditionary, as part of the Defense Department’s Expeditionary Directed Energy Counter-Swarm (ExDECS) initiative. The Office of Naval Research, Marine Corps Warfighting Lab and Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office (JCO) are also involved in the effort.

Other Leonidas-derived prototypes have been acquired for the Army’s Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High-Power Microwave (IFPC-HPM) initiative and the Navy’s Advanced Naval Technology Exercise (ANTX) demonstrations.

Just last week, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters that the Defense Department was deploying Dronebusters and other capabilities to the bases in New Jersey where UAS incursions had recently occurred.

A Dronebuster “essentially emits a signal which is able to interrupt the signal on the drone which can affect its flight. So, that’s a methodology that we have that is able to essentially bring drones down non-kinetically should we need to do that,” Ryder said.

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The Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024 includes a total of $26.4 billion “to support Israel in its effort to defend itself against Iran and its proxies and to reimburse U.S. military operations in response to recent attacks,” according to a summary of the legislation provided by Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee.

Of that amount, $1.2 billion is for the secretary of defense to provide to the Israeli government for the procurement of Iron Beam, to be transferred pursuant to an exchange of letters, according to the text of the bill.

Following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the White House requested $14.3 billion from Congress for a security assistance package. Of that, $1.2 billion was to go toward research, development, test and evaluation of Iron Beam, according to a letter to Congress from the Office of Management and Budget.

Notably, the funding provided by lawmakers in the supplemental that Biden signed this week would put $1.2 billion toward procurement of the system for Israel — not RDT&E. That money would come from the Pentagon’s Defensewide accounts.

The 100-kilowatt high-energy laser is designed to defeat a variety of threats, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and engage targets “a few hundred meters to up to several kilometers” away, according to Israeli defense contractor Rafael, which has been working on the weapon.

“Increasingly sophisticated airborne threats — including mortars, rockets, and UAVs as well as swarms of mini-UAVs — are being faced by both military forces and population centers. Since current Kinetic interceptor systems are expensive and not always sufficient to counter some of these threats, powerful new solutions are required that meet the needs of this new reality,” the company said on its website.

The weapon was successfully tested in 2022, according to officials.

The system is expected to be fielded by the Israeli military by the end of 2025, a Rafael executive told Breaking Defense last month.

The $1.2 billion appropriated by the U.S. Congress for Iron Beam will remain available until Sept. 30, 2026.

Directed energy weapons are seen as advantageous for air-and-missile defense because they are relatively inexpensive per shot compared to traditional interceptors and they possess nearly unlimited magazines. The U.S. military is pursuing a variety of lasers and high-power microwaves to defeat drones and other threats.

Doug Bush, the U.S. Army’s acquisition chief, suggested last fall that the Pentagon may look to procure Iron Beam in the future.

“I was pleased to see that [Iron Beam] investment” in the original supplemental request that the White House put forward, he told DefenseScoop during a roundtable with reporters at the Pentagon in November. “I’d seen the system when I last went to Israel, I saw the first prototype,”

He noted that the U.S. military has directed energy systems in the works, including the Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) prototype program, which is being overseen by the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office.

“The Israeli system is a slightly different approach technologically. So actually, it’s a nice complement because we’re kind of going down one path, they’ve gone down a slightly different one. So I think yes, there’s potential if theirs works well, it could be something we could think about leveraging for our needs in that space. So that’s really a benefit of that funding is … we can explore multiple paths here and see what works,” Bush said.

The U.S. Navy is also interested in the potential for directed energy weapons to boost the department’s defensive capabilities.

Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro told reporters earlier this year that he’s looking to increase investments in DE in future budget submissions.

Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, commander of U.S. Naval Surface Forces, has expressed frustration that the sea service hasn’t been able to deploy more directed energy systems onboard ships that could defeat unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and other threats.

“I think there’s definitely an emphasis and a real emphasis on counter-UAS. The Army has led that for a long time. The Navy is focused on it from both a shore perspective and a ship perspective. And we need to do more work there because we are at the wrong end of the cost curve,” Adm. James Kilby, vice chief of naval operations, said Wednesday during a panel at the Global Security Forum hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Let’s go reflect on this and figure out a better way to do this, maybe through some directed energy, electronic warfare, high-powered microwave things in the future. And I think we’re looking at that.”

Rafael has been developing a naval variant of Iron Beam. It showcased the system at last year’s International Maritime Defense Exhibition in Singapore.

The weapon is designed to “quickly and effectively engage and neutralize a variety of threats, including short-range ballistic rockets, drones and UAVs of various sizes,” the company said in a release before the event.

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The contractor’s long-pulse tools will be tested this summer during Advanced Naval Technology Exercise-Coastal Trident, the company announced Thursday.

The event, known as ANTX-CT24, “will include field experiments to investigate the ability of the company’s long-pulse High-Power Microwave (HPM) technology to temporarily disable small vessels powered by outboard motors,” Epirus said in a release. “The activities, planned and conducted by Naval Surface Warfare Center Port Hueneme’s Office of Technology, will examine the capability of a low-cost, effective and non-lethal option to address the growing threat from seaborne drones.”

U.S. forces in the Red Sea have been combatting unmanned surface vessels as well as attack drones launched by the Houthis from Yemen. Nation-states have also demonstrated their ability to use USVs effectively, including Ukraine’s employment of robo-boats against Russian forces.

ANTX demonstrations led by the Navy’s research-and-development community provide testbeds that allow end users to assess the utility of industry’s innovations and inform investment and acquisition priorities. The Coastal Trident iteration is conducted annually to examine the capabilities of port and maritime security organizations to counter “asymmetric threats” to maritime forces, marine transportation, and critical port and maritime infrastructure, according to a program description.

Technology focus areas for ANTX-CT24 include unmanned systems applications and countermeasures; critical infrastructure security, threat mitigation and incident response; port and maritime domain awareness, data fusion and decision support; augmented and virtual reality modeling, simulation and digital engineering; and in-service engineering, maintenance and sustainment of surface fleet and expeditionary combat systems.

“In addition to testing the [HPM] technology’s ability to temporarily disable outboard motors and small vessels, the exercise will … test its effectiveness when deployed on uncrewed autonomous vessels,” Epirus noted in a release.

The execution phase for ANTX-CT24 is slated for June-September and will involve land-based, waterside and offshore facilities throughout Southern California.

“We have conducted several HPM experiments in the past, as a method to counter electronic systems and unmanned aircraft swarms, and expect that an assessment of Epirus’ HPM system in a counter-surface vessel role will support the program’s goals effectively,” Brendan Applegate, fleet experimentation and exercise lead at NSWC Port Hueneme, said in a statement.

Last month, Epirus completed delivery of four prototype systems to the Army to support the service’s Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High-Power Microwave initiative. The prototypes are derived from the contractor’s Leonidas system, which is equipped with solid-state Gallium Nitride (GaN) power amplifiers. Artificial intelligence-enabled GaN semiconductors enable high levels of power density without special cooling tech, according to the company.

“We welcome this opportunity [at ANTX-CT24] to demonstrate the effectiveness of long-pulse HPM technology in another threat environment. Epirus can defend against a wide range of threats across domains,” CEO Andy Lowery said in a statement. “Our expanded collaboration with the Department of Defense also underscores the growing recognition of the benefits of working with innovative tech companies outside of the traditional defense ecosystem.”

Directed energy weapons, such as high-power microwaves and high-energy lasers, are relatively inexpensive per shot compared to traditional munitions and possess nearly unlimited magazines. HPMs are considered particularly advantageous for defeating drone swarms.

Navy leaders have expressed frustration that the service hasn’t fielded more DE systems, and Secretary Carlos Del Toro suggested earlier this year that he’s looking to boost investments in these types of technologies.

For fiscal 2025, the service is requesting about $14 million for research, development, test and evaluation for its Meteor program, which is geared toward improving air-and-missile defenses. It’s planning to invest another $10 million in related RDT&E efforts in fiscal 2026.

The objective of the initiative, which will build on previous work done under a different program name, is to demonstrate “tactically significant, non-kinetic” HPM payload integration onto Naval platforms to “defeat, track, engage and assess operational threats while assessing integrated sensors and weapon control options,” according to budget justification documents.

The development effort “will provide capability with low cost per-shot, deep magazine, tactically significant range, short time engagement for multi-target approach, dual deception and defeat capability,” per the justification books.

A stated goal is to deliver a shipboard weapon prototype for integration in fiscal 2026 as well as a test bed for continued technology maturation and evaluation.

The Department of the Navy is also requesting about $6 million in fiscal 2025 for a Marine Corps Landing Force Tech program element that includes plans to complete research to provide a solid-state HPM capability in a form factor that will enable Marines to conduct expeditionary advanced base operations to defeat drone swarms and other unmanned systems in littoral regions, according to budget justification documents.

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DE weapons such as high-energy lasers could offer significant advantages over traditional air-and-missile defense weapons, including speed of light engagement, low cost per shot, deep magazines, precision tracking, graduated effects and increased battlespace awareness, Frank Peterkin from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering noted during a NDIA webinar Tuesday.

There are long-standing technical hurdles that laser weapon developers and integrators have had to contend with, such as beam control, thermal management, size, weight and power issues. And military leaders have expressed frustration that the department hasn’t transitioned more systems from the lab to the battlefield.

The science-and-technology aspects of DE get a lot of attention, Peterkin noted.

However, “a drumbeat that kind of gets lost is — because we’re a new capability for directed energy systems that’s novel and not the way we fought in the past with more conventional kinetic systems in particular — we need to figure out how to do command and control in a different way. There are going to be some uncomfortable choices when we bring these systems forward where commanders who would normally shoot a missile, say relatively far to take on an incoming threat, but might have to decide [that] ‘I trust that the direct energy system will in fact engage and defeat that threat and I can reserve my more costly and more capable missile for defensive applications and other parts of the threat space,'” he said.

There are some key challenges associated with C2 integration.

“We have a new way of fighting, we have a new way of engaging targets with direct energy. Lasers and microwaves are slightly different. We don’t talk about microwaves so much. There’s different classification hurdles. But … we need to have a command-and-control capability. Not to prescribe how the services would implement the C2, but somewhere in their command and control they need to understand, well, what would the direct energy system do against this target? So now you have to know which target it is — or at least roughly the class if not the actual specific type. Do we have understanding of lethality against that target? If we don’t, can we make some assumptions given, you know, similar characteristics? Do we have a timeline for engagement for the kill chain that makes sense?” Peterkin said.

He continued: “And all of that has to be built into the combat system such that it can make those tradeoffs against other weapons that it might have available to bring to bear on that target. So I would say … one of the biggest challenges is simply that early part of the decision-making in that counter-kill chain: What is the target? Where is it going? When is it gonna get there? Do I have game against that target? And do I make sense today to be the shooter with directed energy or should I defer to something else in the layered defense?”

More transition work is also needed with regard to prototyping and experimentation, DOTMLPF-P, mission engineering and operational analysis, the industrial base and open systems architectures for the Pentagon to successfully field these technologies, he noted.

“All of these have to get addressed in parallel and as a community for us to proceed to be, you know, true capability for the warfighter,” he said.

In recent years, the department has focused its DE efforts on “proven technology” for tactical missions, such as countering drones, rockets, artillery, mortars and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) systems, according to the roadmap that Peterkin laid out.

However, in the future, the Pentagon wants to be able to employ directed energy systems against increasingly sophisticated threats.

In the 2025-2030 time frame, the department will be looking to use DE for tactical missions such as countering anti-ship cruise missiles, land-attack cruise missiles and aircraft.

Beyond 2030, the plan is to evolve the tech to take on “strategic missions,” such as defending against faster-moving ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons.

“Directed energy is basically electromagnetic radiation, whether it’s light or RF energy, and therefore travels at the speed of light. For those of you who haven’t looked up your physics books recently, for comparison, we talk about hypersonic threats being really, really fast — that’s somewhere in the 5 to 15 Mach range. The speed of light is about 100,000 times faster than anything we or anybody else is fielding with hypersonic systems. It’s really fast. And that means it can touch a threat or a target nearly instantaneously. That doesn’t necessarily mean we affect it instantaneously — there’s oftentimes a dwell time required … But that speed-of-light engagement is what particularly allows us to take on maneuverable threats because we can move electric electromagnetic beams much faster than we can ever move a defensive missile, for example. So that speed of light is a big factor,” Peterkin said.

However, developing capabilities to go after those types of threats will be a harder lift and require significant maturation of technologies, he acknowledged.

“Cruise missiles are typically going to operate in subsonic, below speed of sound to maybe slightly supersonic, with relatively known trajectories coming into a target. And in that instance, for us in the near term, that’s our first low-hanging fruit in the next step of our roadmap. And to get there, we need primarily more power in our continuous wave laser systems, and slightly better beam control than we have today. If we can get those lined up in the next few years, then I think we’re gonna have initial capabilities against cruise missiles, particularly for area defense where you get opportunities to take side shots as opposed to head-on,” he said.

“But as you go to the supersonic and the ballistic and the hypersonic … they’re getting faster and faster, but they’re also getting more maneuverable and more unpredictable. And so in addition to the fact that we need more capability on the weapon itself, that’s going to start putting a premium on the initial identification of those threats. And that’s sensors on the battlefield — whether it’s, you know, ships or for the Army bases. Do you know what’s coming towards you? Do you know when it’s going to come in? How are you going to layer your various defensive systems to take on that threat and other threats? So it will quickly become more than just about the weapon. It’ll become about the command-and-control integration and the weapon coordination and assignment that has to come along with that sort of fight,” he added.

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“I’m very, very excited by it,” Del Toro said of directed energy technology during a meeting with journalists on the sidelines of the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium.

His remarks came against the backdrop of Houthi kamikaze drone and missile attacks in the Red Sea that are putting military and commercial vessels at risk. The U.S. military has been using traditional types of air defense systems to destroy them.

On Tuesday, “Iranian-backed Houthis launched a complex attack of Iranian designed one-way attack [unmanned aerial vehicles] (OWA UAVs), anti-ship cruise missiles, and an anti-ship ballistic missile from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen into the Southern Red Sea, towards international shipping lanes where dozens of merchant vessels were transiting. Eighteen OWA UAVs, two anti-ship cruise missiles, and one anti-ship ballistic missile were shot down by a combined effort of F/A-18s from USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69), USS Gravely (DDG 107), USS Laboon (DDG 58), USS Mason (DDG 87), and the United Kingdom’s HMS Diamond (D34),” U.S. Central Command said in a post on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

The incident was the 26th Houthi attack on commercial shipping lanes in the Red Sea since Nov. 19, according to Centcom.

Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, the new commander of U.S. Naval Surface Forces, recently expressed frustration that the sea service hasn’t been able to deploy more directed energy systems onboard ships that could defeat these types of threats. The so-called SWO boss said he wants to accelerate the development and fielding of DE tech.

Del Toro suggested there may be more money available to do just that.

“Since the day I came in as secretary of the Navy, I have known and had a strong conviction that the way of the future has everything to do with laser technology, with microwave technology. And I reflect back to the days I was [a student] at the Naval Postgraduate School — this is ancient history — taking laser courses at NPS as part of my space systems engineering curriculum, and even then, recognizing those many years back that this would be something really transformative at some point in time. Like the SWO boss, I’m concerned that it’s taking a long time to come to fruition,” Del Toro told reporters.

However, advances are being made, the SECNAV noted. He specifically mentioned the high energy laser with integrated optical-dazzler and surveillance (HELIOS) system as an example of a directed energy weapon that seems promising.

In August 2022, Lockheed Martin announced that it delivered the first HELIOS platform to the Navy, which has been installed on the USS Preble destroyer. According to the contractor, the weapon is “scalable by design.”

HELIOS is also known as Surface Navy Laser Weapon System Increment 1.

“We are at a point now, where, quite frankly, on the USS Preble, as you know, with the HELIOS system, we are a bit beyond the experimentation point where — we will be continuing to do experiments, I don’t want to get into the specifics, but over the course of the next year, for example, even less, that will fully flush out how we can employ this incredibly transformative system … that’s energy dependent, that can actually be operated on a DDG-51 class destroyer without having to modify the engineering plan a whole lot other than for cooling, and things like that,” Del Toro said.

“This is the way of the future. And we are going to be looking in the fiscal year ‘26, ‘27 and into the [Future Years Defense Program] on how to accelerate the deployment of HELIOS and HELIOS-like capabilities on our DDG-51 platforms, because it is the way that we will need to address these swarm attacks of drones and other systems, whether they be on the surface or they actually be in the air. So yes, this is the way of the future and we’re going to look at accelerating those investments into the FYDP,” he added.

The Defense Department writ large has been spending about $1 billion annually on researching and developing directed energy weapons, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Del Toro did not provide any details about how much additional funding might go toward HELIOS or other systems in future budget submissions. The Pentagon is expected to release its five-year spending plans for fiscal 2025-2029 in the coming months.

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U.S. ships and their crews have been using missiles and other traditional types of air-defense weapons in recent months to take down the Houthi’s unmanned aerial systems and platforms.

“What we’re facing in the Red Sea is more than just drones. We’re looking at land-attack cruise missiles, we’re looking at anti-ship ballistic missiles that are getting shot in the Red Sea by the Houthis. And our ships are dealing with all of those,” Vice Adm. Brendan McLane told reporters during a teleconference ahead of the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium that kicks off Tuesday.

“One of the things that I think we really need to get after quicker is we need to accelerate the development of directed energy weapons, whether it’s a laser, whether it’s a microwave,” said McLane, the so-called SWO boss, when asked how the sea service is thinking about ways to counter drone swarms.

Examples of recent or ongoing research, development, test and evaluation efforts include the Solid State Laser Technology Maturation (SSL-TM); Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy (ODIN); Surface Navy Laser Weapon System Increment 1, also known as HELIOS; High Energy Laser Counter-ASCM Program (HELCAP); and the Layered Laser Defense (LLD) system, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report.

The Navy has tested various directed energy systems and prototypes, but they’ve only been installed on ships on a limited basis.

McLane noted that about a decade ago, he was commander of Destroyer Squadron 50 when the USS Ponce was equipped with a laser weapon system prototype for testing.

Ten years later, it’s “frustrating” that the Navy hasn’t fielded larger numbers of directed energy systems, he told reporters.

“I really want to put a lot of effort into accelerating that, because that that gives you so much [capability] when it comes to magazine capacity and speed and distance” for target engagement, he said.

Directed energy weapons are also touted as a more cost-effective way of shooting down enemy drones, compared with some of the air-defense missiles that are in the U.S. Navy’s arsenal.

A Government Accountability Office report released last year suggested that Navy leaders could do a better job of supporting the transition of successful DE prototypes into acquisition programs.

Meanwhile, the sea service is trying to beef up its munitions inventory.

“From a resource sponsor perspective, over the past two budget cycles, we’ve acknowledged that we need to increase inventory of all munitions. And we’re making those investments and we’re working very closely with industry to establish maximum sustaining rate, vice minimum sustaining rate, to fill our magazines, to fill our vertical launch cells. So that’s goodness,” Rear Adm. Fred Pyle, director of surface warfare, OPNAV N96, told reporters. “But we are always looking for cost-effective ways to neutralize a threat.”

He praised the sailors who are dealing with the Houthi attacks as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian.

“Crews are executing as trained, systems are performing as advertised. And when I think about this, I think about the cost of what this is preventing — rounds going into Israel, rounds going into blue force [assets and personnel], rounds going into the maritime shipping industry and what that generates from a maritime standpoint of major shipping companies having to divert around the around the tip of Africa … Right now, I would say we’re stable on our inventory. But it’s something we’re very focused on and we continue to work on,” he added.

Navy officials are trying to learn lessons from the Red Sea crisis in real time and make necessary changes.

“When it comes to the specifics of what are we doing, when it comes to tactics and training, I’m not going to get into the classified stuff. But what I can tell you is we’re watching it very closely. We have our warfare tactics instructors involved in analyzing the data that we’re getting from the tapes on [USS] Carney and the other ships. And we’re looking very closely at the profiles and what we have to do when it comes to radar tuning, and what we have to do when it comes to setting up our weapons systems on the ship to make sure that we have maximum defensive capability at all times,” McLane said.

Rear Adm. Joseph Cahill, commander of Naval Surface Force Atlantic, said the Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center and its warfare tactics instructors can update tactics, techniques and procedures based on the data that’s being gathered during the operation.

“We’re doing it at speed. And I think that’s another incredible and important investment because when we stood up the Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center in 2014, we didn’t have that ability in the surface community to reach back to our own Top Gun [type of organization] to have those experts. And so that is happening today, and … those warfare tactics instructors are having impacts on combat performance at sea,” he told reporters.

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Directed energy weapons offer advantages over traditional air-and-missile defense systems in that they are relatively inexpensive per shot and possess nearly unlimited magazines for engaging threats.

Under the Biden administration’s funding proposal, $1.2 billion would be transferred to the Israeli government for the development of Iron Beam directed energy capabilities to counter short-range rockets and mortars, like the ones being used by Hamas in the current conflict.

Israeli defense contractor Rafael has already been working on the tech.

“I was pleased to see that [Iron Beam] investment in the supp[lemental]. I’d seen the system when I last went to Israel, I saw the first prototype,” Doug Bush, the U.S. Army’s assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology, told DefenseScoop during a roundtable with reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

He noted that the U.S. military has its own Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) prototype program, which is being overseen by the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office.

“The Israeli system is a slightly different approach technologically. So actually, it’s a nice complement because we’re kind of going down one path, they’ve gone down a slightly different one. So I think yes, there’s potential if theirs works well, it could be something we could think about leveraging for our needs in that space. So that’s really a benefit of that funding is … we can explore multiple paths here and see what works,” he said.

DefenseScoop asked Bush to elaborate on the differences between the Army and Israel’s technology approaches.

“I can’t get too specific. It just has to do with how the laser beam is formed and aimed … and its different power levels as well. Also … they have a very specific problem they’re trying to solve with, you know, rockets and things like that — whereas the Army system, the goal is a little broader [to also defeat] cruise missiles, perhaps things like that. But it’s intriguing. So if they are successful, that certainly could be something the Army could think about leveraging,” he said.

The 100-kilowatt Iron Beam laser is designed to intercept a wide range of threats such as rockets, artillery, mortars and drones and engage targets up to several kilometers away, according to Rafael.

The U.S. Army wants IFPC-HEL capabilities that can protect fixed and semi-fixed sites from cruise missiles, rockets, artillery, mortars, unmanned aerial systems, and rotary and fixed-wing aircraft, according to the service.

In July, the Defense Department announced that it awarded Lockheed Martin an other transaction agreement worth up to $221 million to develop, integrate, manufacture, test and deliver IFPC-HEL prototype weapon systems for the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office. That work is expected to be completed by Oct. 18, 2025.

In October, Lockheed revealed that the deal calls for the company to deliver two 300-kilowatt-class prototypes with an option for two additional units.

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High-power microwaves, which are relatively inexpensive per shot and possess nearly unlimited magazines, are considered particularly advantageous for defeating drone swarms and small UAS such as quadcopters.

“You won’t have enough interceptors to one-for-one match [the enemy’s drones]. So you have to leverage the [electronic warfare] capability and the high-powered microwave capability that we’re bringing on today,” Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey, director of the Pentagon’s Joint Counter-small UAS Office (JCO), said in August at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium.

Less than a year ago, Epirus was awarded a $66.1 million other-transaction deal from the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office to deliver four prototypes to support the service’s Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High-Power Microwave (IFPC-HPM) initiative.

“Epirus delivered its HPM weapon after successfully completing a recent U.S. Army-sponsored government acceptance test hosted in Nevada,” the company said in a release Wednesday. “During the event, the HPM weapon system was stressed under a range of scenarios, showcasing its counter-UAS-swarm capability along with its industry leading reliability. The testing event further validated the system’s safety for personnel and fuel and marked HPM’s continued progression from Science and Technology prototype to operational capability.”

It added: “With its reduced size and weight and unique software backbone, operators can precisely and safely control the system’s HPM pulse to prosecute single UAS and swarms, depending on the threat environment.”

The Epirus prototype is derived from the company’s Leonidas system, which is equipped with solid-state Gallium Nitride (GaN) power amplifiers. Artificial intelligence-enabled GaN semiconductors enable high levels of power density without special cooling tech, according to the company

“The system is frequency agile and rapidly fires a barrage of unique waveforms to exploit the specific frequencies that UAS targets are most susceptible to. This enables tactically relevant counter-swarm ranges beyond small arms fire, even against diverse swarms,” according to a product datasheet.

The platform can be mounted on vehicles — including Army Strykers — or towed, according to Epirus.

The prototype system that was delivered to the Army is slated to undergo further evaluation and testing to “develop tactics, techniques, and procedures for future use” and to mature the technology, per the release.

Officials have highlighted the need to work through tactics, techniques and procedures for directed energy weapons, as the U.S. military prepares to field more of these types of systems.

“What we don’t know yet for directed energy systems necessarily is how to fight [with] them … [and] how to integrate kinetic and non-kinetic effectors, like directed energy, and our traditional air-defense missiles into the battlespace,” Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch, director of the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, said at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium.

When it comes to air-defense doctrine, “usually you get something about, like, shoot [the weapon] as far out as you can with an acceptable probability of kill. And so that generally leads to expensive missiles going out a long, long way to hit that interceptor. And we’ve got to figure out where’s our confidence base in directed energy where … I can make a conscious decision to let that missile come through because I know my DE system is going to take it out at a shorter range. We’ve got a lot to learn in that space and a lot of confidence to build,” he added.

Gainey indicated that the Epirus system will be sent to the U.S. Indo-Pacific command area of operations at some point.

“That’s going to show up to … one of our units in the Indo-Pacom area to get it out there and from an operational assessment getting capability that’s, you know, under evaluation — we haven’t gone to a full-rate production — and getting it out there to the warfighter to not only test it for us, but to provide capability to deliver against the adversary,” Gainey said.

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The request, which comes amid fighting between Israel and the Gaza-based Hamas militant group, includes a total of $14.3 billion for security assistance related to Israel, about $10.6 billion of which would go toward air-and-missile defense support, replenishment of Pentagon stocks and U.S. industrial base investments, according to a summary of the request.

“To defend its nation and as people using previously approved congressional authorities, we’ve delivered military aid, including munitions and interceptors for the Iron Dome system, which is protecting people every day from Hamas rockets. To build on that support, the administration is now requesting funding to invest in Israel’s defense against terrorists, including by strengthening its air-and-missile defense systems. We are requesting an increase in security assistance for Israel to help it protect its people as well as the many Americans who live in Israel and travel to Israel,” U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said during a call with reporters on Friday to discuss the funding plans.

The aid package will “ensure Israel’s air and missile defense systems’ readiness with support for the Government of Israel’s procurement of Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems and components, and development of Iron Beam,” a White House fact sheet states.

The funding request includes $1.2 billion in research, development, test and evaluation funding for Iron Beam, according to a letter to Congress from the Office of Management and Budget.

Unlike Iron Dome and David’s Sling, which use missiles to intercept enemy rockets, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles and other weapons, Iron Beam is designed to use a high-power laser.

“Increasingly sophisticated airborne threats — including mortars, rockets, and UAVs as well as swarms of mini-UAVs — are being faced by both military forces and population centers. Since current Kinetic interceptor systems are expensive and not always sufficient to counter some of these threats, powerful new solutions are required that meet the needs of this new reality,” according to Israeli defense contractor Rafael, which has been working on Iron Beam.

The 100-kilowatt laser is designed to intercept a wide range of threats such as rockets, artillery, mortars and drones and engage targets “a few hundred meters to up to several kilometers” away, according to the company.

“The system can be integrated on multiple platforms and may be a complementary HEL interceptor to any multilayer defense array,” per a product description.

The weapon was reportedly tested last year.

Rafael is also developing another directed energy system called Lite Beam, a 7.5-kilowatt laser interceptor, according to the contractor.

Directed energy weapons are seen as advantageous for air-and-missile defense because they are relatively inexpensive per shot compared to traditional air-defense systems and they possess nearly unlimited magazines. The U.S. military is pursuing a variety of lasers and high-power microwaves to defeat drones and other threats.

Meanwhile, the White House supplemental funding request unveiled Friday also has $61.4 billion related to the war in Ukraine — including $30 billion for Defense Department equipment for Ukraine and replenishment of DOD stocks — $3.4 billion to bolster the U.S. submarine industrial base; $2 billion for State Department foreign military sales financing for partners in the Indo-Pacific; $10 billion for humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, Gaza, Israel and others; $2 billion to counter Chinese government financing in developing countries; and billions more for U.S. border security and other priorities.

Updated on Oct.23, 2023 at 8:45 AM: This story has been updated to include the amount of funding requested by the Biden administration for Iron Beam development.

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