The Army’s Stryker-mounted 50-kilowatt laser system prototypes deployed to the Middle East for evaluation have been “proving challenging to incorporate into a vehicle that has to move around constantly,” the service’s top acquisition official said Wednesday.
Doug Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, told lawmakers the soldiers using the four Directed Energy Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) systems in U.S. Central Command have cited challenges with “the heat dissipation, the amount of electronics [and] the wear and tear of the vehicle in a tactical environment versus a fixed site.”
“That was a request from CENTCOM [to deploy those] and we have done that. And we are learning a tremendous amount because of that. I think what we’re finding is where the challenges are with directed energy at different power levels,” Bush said during a Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee hearing. “However, that learning though on those prototypes is informing all of our other prototyping efforts in directed energy. We’ve deployed other systems at lower power levels that are proving successful, 20-kilowatts, for example, in fixed site-type set ups.”
The Army’s DE M-SHORAD prototype program has focused on developing an on-the-move laser system capable of taking down unmanned aerial systems, rotary-wing aircraft and rockets, artillery and mortars, with RTX [RTX] providing the laser and beam director and Kord Technologies serving as the laser module integrator.
After receiving the set of four prototypes and conducting initial testing, the Army deployed the Stryker-mounted laser systems to CENTCOM earlier this year to gather feedback from soldiers and inform next steps, to include potentially taking the program into a follow-on competition for production.
“There’s, of course, no better feedback than that. They will tell you everything and they’re not worried about your feelings. So we are getting that feedback, which is what we need,” Bush said on Wednesday. “We are learning that directed energy in a lab environment or in a test range is different from a truly deployable, tactical environment. But it’s the future and we are committed to it as part of our overall counter-UAS approach.”
Bush was also asked during the hearing about the Army’s approach to pursuing both directed energy and high-powered microwave capabilities for counter-drone priorities, citing lasers as offering “the ability to control the beam and get it on the target and keep it on the target long enough to have the effect.”
“High-powered microwave [capability] has the potential to give you kind of an area weapon versus a precision weapon against drones. What we are learning there is how do you apply that tech in a safe way on a battlefield where other things are flying around, including our aircraft, and how do you target with it using other systems, like a radar, to make sure that you’re pointing at the right place and it has the effect,” Bush said.
The Army in April successfully completed engineering and development testing with its Epirus-built drone-killing microwave-based directed energy prototype for the Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Powered Microwave (IFPC-HPM) program, which the company said validated the system’s effectiveness against drones and drone swarms (Defense Daily, May 15).
Bush told lawmakers on Wednesday high-powered microwave systems “are showing promise,” adding that for fixed-site protection they could “make a lot of sense because they don’t have to move around.”
“We’re learning from them. If they show enough promise they could be part of a layered approach that looks at both approaches, lasers and microwaves,” Bush said.