Israel Sets to Deploy Laser Weapons to Counter Missiles, Rockets, and Drones

idea for SDI, urged on the president by physicist Edward Teller, was to use small nuclear explosions in space to generate intense laser beams which would hit hundreds of Soviet missiles, each carrying between three and ten nuclear warheads, as they emerged from their silos in Russia.

By 1993, after spending more than $200 billion, the laser-based idea was abandoned as impractical.

But the idea of developing laser weapons on a more modest scale, and which would not rely on nuclear explosions, continued in other programs. Twenty-five years ago, Israel and the United States worked on the Nautilus, which relied on chemical reactions to produce high-energy laser system with less ambitious range, with the aim of destroying rockets in flight. The Nautilus was abandoned in 2005 because the large chemical tanks required for each individual made the entire system unwieldy, in addition to being exceedingly vulnerable to enemy attacks.

The chemicals were also corrosive and toxic.

The current Iron Beam system uses solid-state laser, which only needs large amounts of electricity to function.

Israeli engineers involved in developing the system say that another breakthrough which enabled them to achieve a high success rate was combining and concentrating many high-intensity laser beams at a single specific point on an aerial target.

The IDF has recently awarded a $100 million contract to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., state-owned defense contractor working with technology for more than two decades. The company says that it was only in the last two years that the company’s engineers have been able to resolve some of the major complications, including the size of the system and its low effectiveness.

“We had a problem with energy, tracking and the ability to pierce the atmosphere,” said Michael

Israeli officials say Iron Beam’s main advantage will be its cost. According to the company, each interception of an enemy projective by Iron Beam would cost about $3.50. In comparison, a single interception by the current defense systems, Iron Dome and David’s Sling, cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Also, Israel’s main antimissile defensive system, Iron Dome, is heavily subsidized by the United States, which allocated an additional $1 billion dollars to the weapon in the 2022 budget. The American support for Iron Beam is very small, and Israel, in return for this support, is sharing its laser advances with the United States.

Israel is planning to deploy the laser technology first around the Gaza Strip, before deploying it in other parts of the country.