“Is it 100 percent ready? Is it going to work perfectly? Probably not but we're going to learn from it,” Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Mingus told Breaking Defense.
The UK lauded the test of the laser air defense weapon, developed by Britain’s defense innovation unit, just weeks after an American admiral said it was time to be more "intellectually honnest" about what the class of weapons can do.
“What we don't know yet from directed energy systems, necessarily, is... how to fight [with] lasers on the battlefield, how to integrate kinetic and non-kinetic effectors,” said Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch.
“Lasers are complicated. This is not a humvee that's sitting in the motor pool,” said Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler.
For now, the company has received more than $150 million to produce the service’s Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) prototype weapon system.
“IFPC-HPM provides much needed protection against adversarial UAS swarms capable of targeting and overwhelming US and allied air defense systems,” the Army said in budget request documents.