Pete Hegseth got a live look at the Pentagon’s laser weapons

This article is republished with permission from Laser Wars, a newsletter about military laser weapons and other futuristic defense technology. The U.S. Defense Department demonstrated several high-energy laser and high-power microwave weapons for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday, the first publicly known instance of a sitting U.S. defense secretary personally observing a live directed energy weapon firing. The demonstration, which occurred at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, was attended by Hegseth and Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael. “We have dramatically increased investment in scaling directed energy technologies, signaling to our manufacturing partners that the War Department is focused on delivering rapid solutions to the warfighter,” Michael said in a statement when reached for comment. “We are directly tackling manufacturability, reliability and integration—areas that have challenged transition under previous administrations.” (The Office of the Secretary of Defense declined to comment on the record.) According to sources familiar with the demonstration, participating directed energy weapons included the Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) based on AV’s 20 kilowatt LOCUST Laser Weapon System; the “P5 version” of the Army’s 50 kw Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE-MSHORAD) laser weapon system from nLight; the 300 kw Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) from Lockheed Martin known as “Valkyrie”; an Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Power Microwave (IFPC-HPM) system based on the Leonidas from Epirus; and a “high-power microwave variant” of Raytheon’s Coyote interceptor, likely the Block 3 Non-Kinetic (BNK) system. While these existing programs are run out of the individual service branches, Michael’s office is “taking a more active role moving directed energy forward” through the new Joint Laser Weapon System (JLWS) effort initiate