Layered Defense Rooted in Directed Energy Tech.

• Author: Shepherd, Joe

The ongoing Ukraine-Russia war reflects the future of warfare: a multidomain fight across land, sea, air, space and cyberspace. It is a conflict blended between physical and electronic theaters.

It also reveals a future in which urban combat among large civilian populations is the norm, and next-generation capabilities such as unmanned aerial vehicles and hypersonic missiles are brought to bear--to say nothing about conventional infantry, ground vehicles, artillery and aircraft.

Foundational to achieving overmatch in this warfighting continuum and defeating emerging threats is a multi-layered defense architecture that harnesses the full breadth of the military and intelligence infrastructure. As the tip of this spear, warfighters and vehicles must be equipped with a range of electronic warfare technologies such as artificial intelligence, edge computing and directed energy.

The impact of directed energy, specifically on modern day warfare, could be profound--it is a disruptive technology with the potential to transform the battlefield. The country that can develop and field this technology at scale first will have a distinct, strategic advantage over adversaries, with the ability to counter a range of emerging threats from drone swarms to vehicle borne improvised explosive devices to hypersonic missiles.

Directed energy is a uniquely versatile technology family, with several subsets that can be tailored to different applications, and some that can even be dialed to fulfill different functions. It could be used to neutralize enemy combatants nonlethally and avoid material damage or civilian casualties. It could fry the electronic systems in a swarm or flotilla of hostile small boats. A high-energy laser could be used to disrupt and destroy a hypersonic missile with pinpoint accuracy at long range. These are the types of scenarios, among many, where directed energy can be a game changer.

Emerging threats that cannot be countered cost-effectively by kinetic means are making directed energy weapons increasingly essential. And now, the rapidly increasing maturity of the technology offers more return on investment than ever.

Beyond their versatility, the systems offer a slew of benefits that include deep magazine capacity, a more simplified resupply logistics strategy, low cost per shot, speed-of-light engagement and extreme accuracy.

Their stealth-like characteristics make them hard to detect and difficult to intercept. These properties and...