CNAS’s Ellis thinks that more money is needed. Adjusted for inflation, the Defense Department’s spending on directed energy is down 84 percent from its peak at the end of the Cold War. That research, however, produced almost nothing useful, at least in the short run, explaining the terminal skepticism of policymakers. In his own report last year, Council member Byron Callan argued that forcing more money won’t force the technology to maturity. All the same, he called directed energy a “defense disruptor,” as it could upend the business of more than one defense contractor. Indeed, little known firm Kratos developed the LaWS in service aboard the Ponce. Nevertheless, government-spending research firm Govini calculates that the leading winners of laser weapons contracts so far have been traditional contractors Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon. The last may be particularly vulnerable to improvements in laser weapons, as missile sales account for more than a quarter of its revenues.

What’s less clear is how this technology would provide an enduring advantage for the United States. Similarly vulnerable to the disruptive change of directed energy is any military organization that depends on satellites and airpower for its supremacy. The advantages of cost and magazine depth combine to produce a real offset in laser weapons, but may also restore some ascendancy to the defensive. Don’t then count on those AC-130s or any other large manned aircraft to fly through air defenses, self-defense lasers or not. They are themselves big targets for bigger ground-based lasers, and the beam projectors can be hidden well away from the thermally obvious generators feeding them. With enough advance in laser technology, the US Navy may worry less about Chinese airpower in the western Pacific, but Chinese air defenders would worry less about US aircraft ingressing across the beach. Taiwan would be safer, but so would Beijing’s suzerainty on the mainland.

James Hasik is a senior fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security (where this first appeared). Julian A. Platón is an international security researcher in Houston.

Image: U.S. Air Force.