13APR

Army-Navy commit $676m to JLWS laser

2 min read

13:26UTC

Defense News on 28 April reported the US Army and Navy have committed $675.93 million through FY2031 to the Joint Laser Weapon System, a 150-kilowatt containerised laser scalable to 300-500 kilowatts.

← Back to Gulf drone war rewrites procurement Jump to analysis ↓

TechnologyDeveloping

Key takeaway

JLWS adds the cruise-missile layer to a now three-tier US directed-energy bench and gives Lockheed the upper-tier technical lead.

Defense News reported on Tuesday 28 April that the US Army and US Navy have committed $675.93 million through FY2031 to the Joint Laser Weapon System (a containerised directed-energy programme, JLWS), a 150-kilowatt containerised laser scalable to 300-500 kilowatts, designed against cruise missiles rather than Group 1-3 drones ¹. The Navy carries $79.84 million in FY2027 plus $243.3 million through FY2031; the Army adds $337.8 million from FY2028 to FY2031, with no FY2027 funding. Navy contract awards are planned for Q4 2026 ($31.7 million for beam control) and March 2027 ($30 million for the containerised system). Defense News identifies Lockheed Martin as the likely prime, given its lead on the predecessor High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Surveillance (HELIOS) and Indirect Fire Protection Capability High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) programmes.

Group 1-3 drones are quadcopters, fixed-wing tactical UAS, and small loitering munitions in the kilogram-to-tens-of-kilograms class. Cruise missiles are an order of magnitude larger and faster, which is why JLWS sits above the EHEL drone-specific competition that slipped from Q2 to Q4 FY26 and above the LOCUST X3 $5-per-engagement laser benchmark . The directed-energy bench is now layered: LOCUST X3 against Group 1-3 drones, EHEL against larger UAS, JLWS against cruise missiles. AeroVironment, Epirus and Lockheed each sit in different layers of the same architecture.

The Navy's FY2027 spend frontloads beam-control and integration awards to set the technical baseline; the Army's FY2028-onwards spend then funds platform integration once the Navy variant is validated. That sequencing reduces overall programme risk by keeping Army funds out of FY2027 entirely, and it gives congressional appropriators an obvious place to defer if the FY2027 markup pares back the broader directed-energy portfolio. Lockheed's likely prime status reflects its HELIOS and IFPC-HEL technical lead rather than a sole-source decision; the formal contract competition is still ahead.

A $5-per-engagement Group 1-3 laser, a Group 4-5 EHEL system, and a $676 million cruise-missile JLWS together form a directed-energy stack that, in principle, can engage every UAS class without expending kinetic interceptors. Whether that economic model holds depends on the unit cost of beam-control and power-generation systems at production scale, which neither AeroVironment nor Lockheed has yet disclosed at programme-of-record volumes.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The US Army and Navy have together committed $675.93 million over five years for a laser weapon designed to shoot down cruise missiles. The Joint Laser Weapon System starts at 150 kilowatts; powerful enough to destroy a cruise missile; and can be scaled up to 500 kilowatts. It fits inside a standard shipping container, so it can be deployed quickly by ship or land vehicle. This fills the upper tier of a three-layer US laser system: one layer targets small hobby-size drones cheaply, a second targets larger military drones, and JLWS targets cruise missiles. Lockheed Martin, maker of the F-35, is the most likely company to build it, based on its previous work on similar predecessor programmes. No formal contract has been awarded yet; the Navy plans to award the first development contracts later in 2026.

Sources:Defense News

Mentions:US Army →US Navy →Joint Laser Weapon System →Lockheed Martin →Defense One →AeroVironment →Enduring High Energy Laser →LOCUST X3 →Epirus →

First Reported In

Update #7 · DAWG jumps 24,000% as Anduril sweeps board

Defense News· 30 Apr 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

EHEL laser contest slips to Q4 FY26

EHEL's slip from Q2 to Q4 FY26 for drone-specific lasers is the contrast case that defines JLWS as the distinct cruise-missile directed-energy layer above it.

Occurred 10 Apr 2026

Read story →

AeroVironment Unveils $5 Laser for Drone Kill

LOCUST X3's $5-per-engagement Group 1-3 benchmark defines the lower layer of the directed-energy architecture that JLWS's cruise-missile targeting occupies the upper layer of.

Occurred 25 Mar 2026

Read story →

This Event

Army-Navy commit $676m to JLWS laser

JLWS is the upper layer of a directed-energy architecture aimed at cruise missiles rather than small drones, and the third declared programme in a now-layered US laser bench.

Different Perspectives

South Korea's Defense Acquisition Program Administration

DAPA folded drone and roadside-bomb jammers into an 18-year, KRW 3.448 trillion K2 tank upgrade approved 11 August, rather than fund counter-drone kit as its own programme. Seoul is treating the threat as permanent enough to write into a platform's lifecycle, not urgent enough to buy ahead of it.

NATO Support and Procurement Agency

NSPA named five pre-qualified counter-drone suppliers under new framework contracts on 27 July, giving allies a purchasing route with no published budget attached. A framework without committed money is an instrument waiting for a spending decision, not a guarantee one is coming.

Ukraine's Ministry of Defence

Ukraine's forces strike with more than 70 AI and computer-vision systems drawn from over 200 domestic producers, the ministry said on 18 August, a supplier base neither Washington's tariff fight nor Beijing's export licence touches. Kyiv is scaling capability faster than either government is writing rules for it.

A European drone-component manufacturer

A European manufacturer selling components into the United States faces the same 100 per cent tariff and 3 September deadline as any other foreign supplier, with the duty-free onshoring carve-out available only to firms building on American soil. That leaves it to absorb the cost, relocate assembly, or cede the US market rather than shop around a rival supply chain.

Chinese drone component exporters

Exporters now need a case-by-case licence for each US-bound dual-use shipment after MOFCOM's 5 August order, with no published review clock. The same week Shenzhen logged nearly 200,000 domestic logistics-drone sorties and Hunan reported record spraying coverage, a home market large enough to absorb what the licence regime slows from leaving the country.

US drone manufacturers

The onshoring carve-out protects Performance Drone Works' $820 million War Department loan, but the same 3 September deadline hits Red Cat Holdings and Unusual Machines, both filing over 500 per cent revenue growth on 6 August, on Chinese-sourced components with no qualified domestic substitute yet.