ASHLEY ROQUE
Earlier this year the US Army sent four Stryker-mounted 50-kilowatt laser prototypes to the Middle East for soldiers to test out against aerial threats. Initial feedback is rolling in and it’s not overwhelmingly positive, according to Army acquisition head Doug Bush.
“What we’re finding is where the challenges are with directed energy at different power levels,” Bush told members of the Senate Appropriations airland subcommittee on Wednesday. “That [50-kilowatt] power level is proving challenging to incorporate into a vehicle that has to move around constantly — the heat dissipation, the amount of electronics, kind of the wear and tear of a vehicle in a tactical environment versus a fixed site.”
Dubbed the Directed Energy Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD), the service tasked Kord Technologies with integrating a 50-kilowatt class RTX laser onto a Stryker to down class one to three aerial drones and incoming rockets, artillery and mortars. In total, four prototypes were produced, and Breaking Defense first reported that all four were sent to the US Central Command (CENTCOM) region in February.
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