Pentagon Starts Year-Long Laser Counter-Drone Test at Five US Bases
The Pentagon has begun a year-long operational assessment of directed-energy counter-drone weapons at five U.S. military installations, shifting lasers and high-power microwave systems out of the demonstration cycle they have occupied for most of a decade and into the hands of the soldiers expected to live with them. Joint Interagency Task Force 401, led by Brigadier General Matt Ross, is directing the pilot, which was announced on 9 September 2026.
A Test of Availability, Not Marksmanship
The stated purpose is unusual, and it is the most interesting thing about the programme. The task force is not primarily measuring whether the systems can shoot down drones — that has been demonstrated repeatedly at ranges including Yuma Proving Ground and in overseas deployments. It is measuring whether they can be kept ready.
The assessment is designed to collect data on availability rates, maintenance burden, power consumption, cooling demands, integration with routine base operations and operating cost. Crucially, military personnel — not contractor field service representatives — will operate and maintain the systems for the full 365 days.
That distinction has defined the gap between directed-energy promise and directed-energy delivery. Laser and microwave weapons have consistently performed in trials supported by engineering teams and purpose-built power infrastructure. They have consistently struggled when handed to units without that support. Prior U.S. Army deployments of prototype laser systems to Central Command produced exactly this finding: the weapons worked, but sustaining them in the field was harder than expected, and availability suffered.
The Three Systems
Three system types are involved. The Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser, or AMP-HEL, is a 20-kilowatt class laser mounted on an Infantry Squad Vehicle — the lightest and most mobile of the three, intended to accompany manoeuvre units.
The Directed Energy Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense system, DE M-SHORAD, puts a 50-kilowatt laser on a Stryker armoured vehicle. Prototypes were delivered to Fort Sill in 2023 and the system has since been through operational evaluation, including deployment.
The third is the Indirect Fire Protection Capability High-Power Microwave, IFPC-HPM, which takes a different approach entirely: rather than burning a single target, it emits electromagnetic energy across a beam wide enough to disable multiple drones at once by attacking their electronics. Against swarms, that is the more scalable physics, though at shorter effective range.
The specific installations have not been publicly named. Five were selected in May 2026.
Why Base Defence, Why Now
Directed energy has traditionally been justified by its magazine depth and cost per shot: a laser engagement costs the price of the electricity, and the magazine is limited only by power and cooling. Against small drones costing a few thousand dollars, that economics argument is overwhelming compared with missile interceptors.
The counter-argument has always been practical rather than theoretical. Lasers are degraded by rain, fog, dust and atmospheric turbulence; they require substantial prime power and thermal management; and they engage one target at a time, with dwell time on each. None of those limitations disqualify them from base defence, where power is available from the installation grid, where the system does not need to move, and where lasers sit alongside guns, missiles and electronic warfare rather than replacing them.
Fixed-site defence is, in other words, the mission where directed energy is closest to being practical — and it is also the mission that has become urgent. Attacks on airfields, logistics hubs and forward bases by inexpensive one-way drones have become routine across Ukraine, the Middle East and the Red Sea approaches, and the interceptors currently used against them cost orders of magnitude more than the threats.
What a Year Will Show
A 365-day assessment run by military crews will produce the data the services have never had: how many hours a laser is actually mission-capable on a real installation, what it costs to keep it there, how often it needs depot-level attention, and what happens to its performance across a full cycle of weather.
Those numbers will determine whether directed energy becomes a programme of record for base defence or remains a capability that performs well in demonstrations and disappoints in the field. They will also shape allied decisions: the United Kingdom is moving DragonFire toward shipboard fielding from 2027, and several NATO members and Gulf states are evaluating laser and microwave options for exactly this mission.
If the availability figures hold up, directed energy stops being a technology story and becomes a procurement one. If they do not, the assessment will have identified precisely why — which is arguably worth more than another successful shoot-down at a test range.
Sources
- Army Recognition — “U.S. Begins Yearlong Directed Energy Counter-Drone Trials Across Five Military Bases,” 9 September 2026
- U.S. Department of Defense — Joint Interagency Task Force 401 statements on the directed-energy pilot
- U.S. Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office — DE M-SHORAD and IFPC-HPM programme background
