Lasers versus Drones

Scientists have for decades sought to harness directed energy beams into weapon systems that would be cheaper and more efficient than missiles or rockets. A growing number of countries are developing or deploying their own laser air defenses, and some have already been used in war, by Israel and Ukraine.

A NATO nation in Europe is now buying an air defense laser from an Australian company, which officials, experts and industry executives said appears to be the highest-power direct energy system to be sold on the global weapons market. That is a sign that they are becoming more widely available and could be a mainstay for future warfare.

The Australian laser’s maker, Electro Optic Systems, advertises it as able to shoot down 20 drones a minute, at a cost of less than 10 cents per shot. Nicknamed “Apollo” for the Greek god of light, it has about the same level of power as Israel’s highly anticipated Iron Beam air defense laser, which is being built for its own military.

“The Ukrainian war and the Gaza war were key trigger events that everybody thought, ‘It’s the time now to make this operational. We should not spend any more years in doing demonstrations, tests and prototyping,’” Andreas Schwer, Electro Optic Systems’ chief executive, said in a recent interview.

“We have some clients which are so much under actual threat that they say, ‘Listen, we can’t wait — we need something tomorrow,’” Mr. Schwer added. He declined to say which NATO nation is buying the laser.

Air defenses have been in high demand for years, particularly to protect targets in the Middle East, East Asia and the United States. Houthi fighters in Yemen have long used low-cost drones and cheap cruise missiles against Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The advanced drone swarms in Ukraine showed other European countries that they would also be vulnerable if they failed to quickly ramp up protection, experts said. Days before Russian drones entered Polish airspace, Moscow launched more than 800 exploding drones and decoys across Ukraine, its largest such assault of the war.

For Europe, “the salience, and importance, of this kind of capability has been reinforced by what’s happened in Ukraine,” said Sidharth Kaushal, an expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a military research institution in London.

The most powerful air defense system in Ukraine, the American-made Patriot, costs more than $1 billion and can take years to build, which is why only a few hundred of them exist worldwide. It uses million-dollar missiles to intercept incoming airstrikes and is mostly meant to stop high-altitude projectiles — not lower-flying, cheap drones that attack in swarms.

The new Australian 100-kilowatt laser is being marketed at about $83 million for each system, including training and spare parts, and will be delivered to its buyer by 2028.

Low-tech defenses that Ukraine and Russia have used — like capturing drones with nets, shooting them down with rifles and building protective cages around military equipment — are far cheaper. But they are not versatile enough to keep up with fast-moving swarms of drones, especially those that are armed.

Lasers have drawbacks, and some European defense officials remain skeptical about their effectiveness, which is limited by weather. Rain, fog and humidity can throw off a laser’s precision, making it harder to hit its target. Most existing laser weapons have a range of a few kilometers and far too little power to stop ballistic missiles.

But it may not be long before high-energy laser weapons are more often used in warfare.

Lasers were first developed in the United States in 1960, and the Pentagon began testing them in weapons within a decade. They use electricity to heat a target with light particles until it melts, ignites or otherwise burns.

More lasers are in various stages of testing and use across the U.S. military, which is working to develop a one-megawatt weapon next year, according to the Congressional Research Service. At that level of power, lasers potentially could shoot down ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons; the 100-kilowatt laser is more limited to targeted drones, artillery and mortars.

In the decades to come, “it’s going to be a total revolution in the history of warfare,” Mr. Steinitz said. “This is just the beginning of the beginning.”

And it may be all the more necessary in Europe, where Russia’s war is testing NATO’s borders as President Trump looks to retrench at least some American defense support.

“It is very obvious that all the European governments are in quite a panic mode, because Trump has declared, ‘You have to take care for yourself,’” said Mr. Schwer, of the Australian company. “So the Europeans are looking for their own solutions."