US needs to spend more on developing energy weapons, or risk falling behind China and other rivals, a think tank has urged, telling the Pentagon to unify research efforts and even steal foreign technology to avoid falling behind.
Published Tuesday by the Center for a New American Security, a
think tank reportedly close to the current administration, a
report titled ‘Directed-Energy Weapons:
Promises and Prospects’ calls on the Department of Defense to
drastically increase spending and unify research and development
efforts for energy weapons.
The report notes that by 2022, China could overtake the US in
terms of total research and development spending. However, this
might provide an opportunity “to adopt, learn from, or
otherwise tap into foreign scientific and technical developments,
as a way to truncate lengthy and cumbersome weapon development
processes.”
“Directed-energy (DE) weapons, including high-energy lasers
(HEL), high-power microwaves (HPM) and related radiofrequency
technologies, offer the prospect of cost-effective precision
attack or enhanced point defense and can provide warfighters with
flexible non-kinetic employment options,” wrote Jason D.
Ellis, a visiting senior fellow at CNAS.
NEW REPORT: Directed Energy Weapons: Prospects and Promise
http://t.co/CU209hYPg2#lasers#EMPpic.twitter.com/jq3bhJhflQ
— CNAS (@CNASdc) April 7,
2015
Currently, the US Navy operates a $40 million Laser Weapon System
(LaWS), tested as a point-defense weapon against missiles, drones
and boats. LaWS has been in use since August 2014, aboard the
amphibious transport ship USS Ponce.
Read More: Not Sci-Fi anymore: Navy’s ‘fully
operational’ laser gun blows up boats, drones
Though energy weapons have a “history of overpromise and
underperformance,” Ellis wrote, the systems currently in
development show promise. They are “not yet
game-changers,” though.
He urged the Department of Defense (DOD) to create an
“institutional strategy” to develop and field suitable
energy weapon systems, and “empower, and hold accountable, a
DOD champion” to manage the effort, in the form of a
“joint directed-energy weapon program office.”
The report is a part of the ‘20YY Warfare Initiative’, a CNAS
program described as an “ambitious, multi-year project to
examine how emerging technologies will shape the future of
warfare.”
Paul Scharre, the program’s director, noted that energy weapons
held the promise of recapturing some of the technological
advantages that have underwritten US military supremacy in the
world.
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lasers for icebreakers
After several decades and billions of dollars in investments, the
Pentagon “has yet to successfully field an operational
directed-energy weapon system,” Scharre wrote. “While
megawatt-class lasers to shoot down ballistic missiles remain,
for now, a distant prospect, today’s tactical lasers are
potentially useful, cost-effective approaches for countering
threats such as low-cost drones and small boats.”
To accomplish this, however, the Pentagon would have to spend
more. Currently the DOD has budgeted roughly $405.3 million for
DE weapons, just 36 percent of the 2007 spending (adjusted for
inflation).
According to Ellis, “If DOD is to field operationally
meaningful DE weapons, it should increase spending by two to
three times for HEL and by five to 10 times for HPM,” or
roughly half of the spending levels at the end of the Cold War.