Pentagon’s push for laser weapons hitting a major snag

U.S. President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are pushing for a major increase in laser weapons for the military. Hegseth is calling for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to "create a strong and consistent demand signal for the production of greater quantities of these weapons, on the order of tens to hundreds of units."

But according to journalist Jared Keller, their goal is facing some big hurdles.

In an article published by Fast Company on May 6, Keller explains, "The defense industrial base simply cannot invest in the manufacturing and supply-chain capacity required for production at scale if it can't predict how many systems it will actually be asked to build, especially if promising initiatives continually perish in the 'valley of death' between research and development and procurement. The defense industry has been making this point for years."

Keller continues, "A January 2024 report from the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) trade group on directed energy weapon supply chains, which is based on in-depth research and interviews with dozens of key industry stakeholders and subject matter experts, found that the lack of a consistent demand signal 'was raised many times by industry leaders as negatively impacting all levels of the supply chain.'"

The NDIA report stated, "Existing (directed energy weapon) supply chains can only produce small numbers of systems with long lead times."

Keller offers some reasons why NDIA's January 2024 "assessment isn't wrong."

"Despite ramping up laser weapon efforts following a deliberate shift from bulky chemical systems to more reliable, compact, and efficient solid-state and fiber laser technology in the 2000s," Keller notes, "the last two decades have been marked by abandoned projects…. First, many critical components in laser weapons currently face long lead times due to lack of capacity…. Second, the raw materials required to make these components are subject to their own geopolitical bottlenecks…. There's a third constraint lurking beneath the manufacturing and materials challenges: the U.S. simply does not have enough people trained to build laser weapons at scale."