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The Army has committed to transitioning the Pentagon’s Joint Laser Weapon System (JLWS) program to fielding, the department’s critical technologies lead said on Wednesday, reiterating plans to deliver capability by July 2028.
After his office awarded a pair of deals in July to Lockheed Martin [LMT] and nLight Defense [LASR] for JLWS, Assistant Secretary of War for Critical Technologies Michael Dodd said the Army will meet a plan to field initial capability within 24 months as he continues to work with the other services on their own potential pathways.
“So we’re really bullish on our directed energy. The Army’s already committed to transition it. And I’ll say it here, I’m going to knuckle roll the other services to do the same. But everybody recognizes you have to have a one-to-many response in today’s warfare,” Dodd said in remarks at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies Conference in D.C.
Dodd’s critical technologies portfolio sits within the Pentagon’s research and engineering office, and he currently oversees technology development and transition efforts for directed energy as well as contested logistics and quantum computing.
“I think everyone is aware [of] or tracking the inverted cost per shot currently that we are kind of constrained by, right? We’re shooting down $1,000 one-way attack drones with multi-million-dollar systems. It’s completely unsustainable,” Dodd said.
“The [directed energy] technology is there, it has existed for some time. The cost per system is still high. That’s because we’re not scaling the systems, right? So when we transition the systems, my office will certainly fund the onesie, twosies and maybe up to a low dozens type of deployment model. But the services need to pick those up and procure them by the dozens or hundreds. When we start to get into installation defense and theater defense, that’s where we achieve scale and drive the cost down. But the cost per shot is literally the cost of power for the system itself. So you achieve the cost efficiencies actually fairly quickly,” Dodd added.
The JLWS awards in July to Lockheed Martin and nLight were focused on rapidly transitioning high-energy laser weapon systems into “field-ready, production-oriented platforms” capable of defeating drones and cruise missiles,” the Pentagon said at the time (Defense Daily, July 9).
“So my office will advance the technology to that certain [Technology Readiness Level] or the measured outcomes that we have gotten services to commit to [in order to] actually transition it. So again, very iteratively, they’re like, ‘Well, we love 30-kilowatt systems. We want the form factor to be this and size and power to be that. So our team and our funding gets the system in that archetype, so that…we’ve hit [the services’] measured outcomes and then they will actually commit to the transition,” Dodd told reporters following his remarks.
The department in July noted those deals could total up to $847 million, with the initiative to start with a focus on 150-kilowatt prototypes before scaling up to capabilities in the 300-500-kilowattage range.
Jack Cheung, Lockheed Martin’s laser and sensor systems director, confirmed to Defense Daily at the time that the company’s initial JLWS award is valued at $42 million and its total ceiling value is $220 million, with the work focused on “delivering the most powerful laser at 500kW.”
The work for JLWS will build on Lockheed Martin’s work on the Navy’s HELSI and the Army’s IFPC-HEL directed energy programs, Cheung noted.
nLight said in July its initial award is valued at $44 million, with a total ceiling value of up to $627 million, and noted the JLWS deal includes “follow-on development, integration and potential production options” for “multiple high-energy laser weapon systems and other directed energy capabilities” and that its work will build on supporting the Pentagon’s HELSI initiative to develop a 300-kilowatt high-energy laser and its efforts supporting the Army’s 50-kilowatt Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense program.
On the Army’s planned work ahead with both vendors, Dodd told reporters that “anything that is in our program, they’ve committed to transition.”
“As far as the timeline, I’ve said it before, I’m going to say it again, we will deliver things within 24 months or less. So our commitment by the Army is that that will transition. That the Army is [budget planning] for those systems in the out years, so that our program transitions to the Army, they will catch the transition, [and budget] for the JLWS into PAE Fires in the Army,” Dodd said in his remarks.
Dodd said he’s “bullish” the other services will also move forward on JLWS, noting the Navy is “immensely interested” in directed energy.
“I’m coming for them,” Dodd told reporters.
The Army last week announced it had awarded a $464.8 million deal to AeroVironment [AVAV] for the Enduring-High Energy Laser (E-HEL) program, which the company described as the “first-ever production contract for directed energy systems in United States history” (Defense Daily, Sept. 2).
