Directed Energy Weapons.

Jon Ludwigson discusses our April 2023 report on Directed Energy Weapons. DOD spends about $1 billion annually on directed energy—concentrated electromagnetic energy—weapons, including high energy lasers and high powered microwaves. DOD has pursued these potentially transformative technologies for decades because they could provide considerable advantages. They can deliver destructive or disruptive effects to targets at the speed of light and have potentially significant advantages over kinetic weapons, such as guns and missiles, including lower per-use cost.