In the Middle East, cheap drones and massed missile attacks are testing the sophisticated air defense systems of the region’s wealthiest powers.
It’s sparked a race to deploy new experimental laser-based air defenses that military analysts say could help plug the gaps at a fraction of the cost.
Israel is poised to become the first country in the region to deploy new laser air defenses. The $500-million Iron Beam won’t replace Israel’s Iron Dome missiles and other systems, but would complement them by adding a new layer.
“The laser system is the weapon of the future, capable of neutralizing an entire layer of threats,” Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said this month during a tour of facilities belonging to Rafael, an Israeli firm developing laser weapons.
The hype around military lasers pre-dates the “Star Wars” movies and now centers on using these light weapons to zap drones and missiles, reducing the strain on guided missiles to do the same task.
But with no operational laser air defenses, it remains far from clear how these weapons will perform in various real-world conditions.
Cheap drone attacks expose gaps in defenses
Recent conflicts have changed the dynamics of warfare in the Middle East.
Iran-aligned groups such as the Houthi rebels in Yemen have deployed cheap drones to stress the US and Israel’s missile-based air defense systems, using them to attack naval vessels and commercial ships in the Red Sea.
Hezbollah militia in Lebanon have also used drones to test Israel’s Iron Dome, which was designed to shoot down ballistic missiles not low-flying UAVs, while Iran tried to overwhelm the Iron Dome last year with barrages of drones and missiles.
“The ease of acquiring commercial drone technologies and repurposing them for military use has enabled both state and non-state actors to field such offensive systems in increasing numbers,” James Black, assistant director at RAND Europe, told BI.
He said that laser defenses offer a potentially cheap and accurate system for defending against new threats from the air.
While drones cost as little as $2,000, missiles used to take them down can cost around $2 million.
“A layer of laser defenses could help with the costs and give the missiles-based systems time to reload or plug gaps where other systems are vulnerable,” Sascha Bruchmann, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Bahrain, told BI.
The difficulty of stopping drones has an added challenge, two retired Israeli generals previously warned: Air defenses need more ways to defeat drones or risk being knocked out of action themselves.
The race for laser weapons
Last month, Defense News reported that Rafael, the Israeli defense firm, had displayed its laser air defense technology at weapons shows in Abu Dhabi, indicating it may be prepared to sell the tech to other regional powers.
Rafael didn’t respond to a Business Insider request for comment.
Saudi Arabia is also developing its own laser air defense capacity using Chinese systems, according to reports, while the UAE is seeking to develop its own laser systems.
Lasers are designed to direct an intense beam of light that uses heat to cut through a target. They can engage “multiple targets at a low cost per shot,” Black said, adding they do this “without the risk of running out of missiles or ammunition in the way that traditional air defense systems do.”
The UK Ministry of Defence has said that costs could be as low as tens of dollars per shot.
But a laser must have impressive accuracy to stay on a point long enough to burn through it — no easy feat against a ballistic missile traveling over five times the speed of sound. Or it must have sufficient power to rapidly burn through a target.
An added challenge is that missiles could be adapted with plastics and metals that are more resistant to lasers.
Not a silver bullet
Lasers may prove to be better drone killers than missile interceptors. But laser weapons are yet to be deployed at scale, and remain experimental.
Bad weather or smoke can also interfere with the strength and precision of a beam, and generating the power needed in remote front-line regions remains a challenge.
Black said weapons systems take time and money to refine, with Rafael’s laser air defense systems in development for decades.
“Multiple breakthroughs were necessary along the way,” he said, which “priced out many nations, as others grew disillusioned and cynical.”
Yuval Steinitz, Rafael’s chairman, said at a media briefing in December that one challenge they faced was that with larger lasers, the air density in the atmosphere disperses the power of the beam.
“We had to find a way to bypass the atmosphere and keep the lasers as strong as when they were” fired, he said, explaining that they resolved this by shooting smaller beams that then converge on vulnerable points on a target to disable it.
In clashes between countries like Israel and Iran — and in defending oil and gas infrastructure in places like Saudi Arabia — laser weapons might not be an instant fix, but they’re moving closer to a reality.
“It’s a whole series of technologies that is just becoming small, light, precise, and rugged enough to allow a military application,” Bruchmann said, “rather than an experimental one that always seemed so close to a working weapon.”
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