Israel's Iron Beam Set For Historic Deployment.

• Date: 01 February 2025
• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Published date: 01 February 2025

HAIFA, Israel--If all goes as planned later this year, the Israel Defense Forces will be the first military to widely deploy a high-energy laser weapon: the Iron Beam air defense system.

It could prove to be a watershed moment in the history of military technology.

Directed energy weapons have been the subject of speculation, research, development and testing for decades, with numerous technological dead ends and cancelled programs.

Smaller lasers weapons that can shoot down small drones close by a vehicle have been used or are close to a high technology readiness level. But so far, there have been no large orders forthcoming from the U.S. military or others.

Consequentially, as the report, "Directed Energy Weapon Supply Chains" published by the National Defense Industrial Association's Emerging Technologies Institute in January 2024 pointed out, the United States has no established laser weapon industrial base to speak of--no supply chain, no factories, no cadre of workers. The U.S. military has fewer than 20 laser weapon systems, all of them built in laboratories, according to a list provided by the Pentagon's Joint Directed Energy Transition Office.

In a briefing with reporters in early December at the headquarters of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, company chairman Yuval Steinitz...