U.S. Army Targets Early 2028 for First LOCUST X3 Counter-Drone Lasers, Two Years Behind Israel

Brigadier General Guy Yelverton, the capability programme executive for Defensive Fires, called spring 2028 his “far-down point” and said delivery in December or January would be “a great win”, while Kirk Williams, chief engineer of the Army’s Directed Energy Project Office, said the service would like to keep the first unit for testing and training, since “everything that we produce as a capable counter-UAS system tends to get deployed somewhere.” John Garrity, AeroVironment’s vice president for directed energy, put the order at “more than 26” weapons, which would approach $18 million per unit were the whole contract spread across 26, although the sum also covers support and training. The 7th Infantry Division was named as a likely first user. A solicitation reported by Aviation Week the same day showed the Army planning to decide in fiscal year 2031 whether to build a scaled-down version for the much smaller Infantry Squad Vehicle-Utility.

The LOCUST X3 is the third generation of a design the Army has tested since 2022, when the first palletised LOCUST was delivered under the Palletized-High Energy Laser effort, with two 20-kilowatt-class systems following on Infantry Squad Vehicles in September 2025 and two more on Joint Light Tactical Vehicles that December. The service’s more ambitious path, the 50-kilowatt Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense system on the Stryker, fared considerably worse, with four prototypes sent to the Middle East in early 2024 and Army acquisition chief Doug Bush telling the Senate that May that initial soldier feedback was “not overwhelmingly positive”, citing heat dissipation, the volume of electronics and the wear of tactical use. The choice of a lighter laser that can actually be fielded over a more powerful one that struggled outside the test range reflects a sober reading of that experience.

The U.S. Army is nonetheless far from the first to reach this point. Israel’s Ministry of Defense declared its Iron Beam laser operational in September 2025 and handed the first unit to the Israel Defense Forces on December 28, adding a laser layer beneath Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow, although a senior Defense Ministry official later told Ynet that the procedures needed for field deployment had not been completed. Britain awarded MBDA £316 million in November 2025 to fit the DragonFire laser to Type 45 destroyers from 2027, with the Ministry of Defence estimating the cost at around £10 per shot. Should the spring 2028 target hold, the Army would field its first production laser more than two years after Israel and after the Royal Navy’s planned 2027 installation, a gap that reflects how long the service spent on prototypes before committing to a production design.

A high-energy laser of this kind does not destroy a drone on impact as a missile does, but holds its beam on one point of the airframe for several seconds until the heat burns through the structure, a motor, a battery or the sensors, with each engagement costing little more than the fuel burned by the generator that powers it. That is the central appeal for a force facing cheap drones in large numbers, when even Anduril’s new Steelfin is being pitched as a Patriot interceptor at a third of the PAC-3 MSE’s price. The limits are equally physical, with dust, rain and smoke scattering the beam, its reach being far shorter than a missile’s, and waste heat restricting how long a vehicle can keep firing. The Army is therefore funding prototype subsystems in twelve categories, from power generation and energy storage to the laser source and beam director, under a modular open architecture that allows components from suppliers other than AeroVironment to be inserted later.

The scale of drone use in the war with Iran, where the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln came home with more than 100 drone kill marks painted on its island, has made a cheap and deep magazine a pressing requirement. The LOCUST X3 is intended to form the innermost layer of the Army’s air defence, sparing interceptor missiles for cruise and ballistic threats, and its timeline, announced at the same AUSA meeting that saw the XM1776 wheeled howitzer unveiled, reflects a service now buying mature systems quickly rather than waiting for ideal ones. AeroVironment has bought long-lead components ahead of demand, although Colonel Charles Kean of the 7th Infantry Division cautioned that directed energy is not a “single bullet” answer to drones. Field trials with the first unit in 2028 are expected to establish whether the order grows well beyond its first 26 weapons.