The Department of Defense on Thursday awarded two companies to develop laser weapons for the United States.
The Joint Laser Weapon Systems (JLWS) agreements, which have an initial award value of $86 million and a total program ceiling of $847 million, were awarded to nLIGHT Defense and Lockheed Martin Aculight to advance the United States’ cruise missile and unmanned aerial system (UAS) defense architecture.
It comes after the Trump administration requested a $1.5 trillion defense budget from Congress. In May, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers that the cost of the Iran War had risen to $29 billion—with prices climbing since, notably following recent days’ events including the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran essentially being broken as part of new attacks in the Strait of Hormuz.
A substantial proportion of that sum went towards replacing munitions. In April, however, the DOD secretary blamed the Biden administration for low weapons stockpiles and said replacing them could take “months and years.”
‘Scalable, Cost-Effective Solutions’
The JLWS program, led by the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, seeks to provide combatant commanders with scalable, cost-effective intercept solutions for threats.
The weapons have a lower cost-per-intercept and have faster engagement than traditional kinetic systems, the department said.
“We must actively defend the homeland against emerging threats,” Emil Michael, under secretary of defense for research and engineering, said in a statement. “We are partnering with industry to rapidly deliver deep magazine-directed energy capabilities to the Joint Force that can be seamlessly deployed across multiple domains.”
Of the initial $86 million awarded, $44 million of that went specifically to nLIGHT, based in Camas, Wash.
“This award reflects the Department of War’s increasing focus on transitioning directed energy from prototype to deployed capability at scale and aligns directly with our strategy to move beyond demonstration programs and into production-oriented platforms that can be fielded across land and maritime environments,” Scott Keeney, chair and chief executive officer of nLIGHT, said in a statement.
“nLIGHT’s vertically integrated laser architecture, state-of-the-art beam‑combination, precision tracking expertise, and production-ready high-energy laser solutions position us to deliver reliable, scalable performance in support of next-generation air and missile defense missions,” Keeney added.
Paul Lemmo, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Sensors, Effectors, and Mission Systems at Lockheed Martin, the other awardee, said in a press release that the operational‑tactical prototype is “the highest‑power laser ever packaged in a transportable container.”
“By applying our expertise in lowering size, weight, and power along with rugged‑system design, we can rapidly build containerized laser weapons in the near term,” Lemmo said.
In April, the Trump administration awarded RTX a $398.7 million contract for Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles.
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