There's a HUGE Problem with Laser Drone Defense

[00:00:00]Are lasers actually good against drones?

[00:00:03]If you want to send me this question about whether laser weapons would actually be useful against drones, he said his dad said that lasers are a bad investment. They haven't really proven themselves against missiles in combat.

[00:00:15]They cost a lot to build and if a laser shoots down 100 cheap drones and 101st drone gets through and kills the laser system, congratulations. You just built a really expensive hunk of metal. And you know, the funny thing is that's kind of true about any air defense system.

[00:00:31]But another viewer then sent me this article about Saudi Arabia allegedly being angry that a Chinese counter-drone laser system didn't work very well in the desert against incoming Iranian drones.

[00:00:44]And normally this is the part where Gary would dump some like teeny tiny into here, but this is actually kind of a serious consideration. We can joke about China's quality being crap, but sooner or later they're going to build something effective.

[00:00:58]And if they had built a laser that was extremely effective, we would all be kind of concerned about now. Luckily they haven't.

[00:01:07]You know, dust and sand disrupted this particular laser system and the system spent more time cooling itself than actually shooting. But let's kind of start off with one thing straight here.

[00:01:20]Lasers aren't useless.

[00:01:23]Lasers are not Star Wars, either. Hell, sometimes Star Wars isn't even Star Wars. Looking at you, Rise of Skywalker.

[00:01:31]>> [screaming] >> All right, I want my I want my 20 bucks back.

[00:01:39]Lasers are a tool. And like most military tools, they're very good under certain conditions and then kind of terrible under other conditions. You mean, I love I have like two blocks down here.

[00:01:51]So, I have a pair of vice grips. Oh, yeah. These vice grips.

[00:01:57]I have these vice I love these vice grips. Best vice grips I've ever had.

[00:02:01]All right, but if I try to use these to bang a nail in, wouldn't work too well, right?

[00:02:08]So, the the story the moral of the story is you need to use the right tool for the right job.

[00:02:15]And the Saudi story is important and we have to be very very careful with it because what we don't want to do is assume that Chinese equipment is crap from the jump.

[00:02:27]Saudi Arabia bought this Chinese Sky Shield counter drone system, which included radars, jammers, and a Silent Hunter laser. And according to the article, the real system looked good in demonstrations, but desert conditions messed with the tracking and the beam performance.

[00:02:46]So, heat forced more power into cooling.

[00:02:49]In some cases, the laser needed 15-30 minutes of continuous targeting. Just exactly useful when a drone is flying right at you to ruin your day.

[00:02:59]The jammers, not the laser, reportedly did most of the useful work. So, you know, if you're if you're sales brochure, you open up a sales brochure.

[00:03:07]I got a I got a eyeglass cloth. You're reading your sales brochure, you know, and it says laser weapon, but the actual system is a truck full of electronics, uh then, you know, you you might that might be your first clue that maybe the laser isn't as good as the the person who sold it to you thinks it is.

[00:03:30]And that doesn't mean all lasers are bad. It just means that the environment matter. Maybe the heat and dust of Saudi Arabia wasn't something wasn't appropriate for this particular type of laser. A laser weapon is not a death ray. It's [clears throat] a system that puts heat energy on a small spot for enough time to to make something fail.

[00:03:51]Right? Maybe it burns through a drone scan, maybe it damages a propeller, maybe it cooks through a sensor, uh it damages the electronics. South Korea's defense procurement agency has described counter-drone lasers as uh they can burn through uh engines and electronics in about 10 to 20 seconds.

[00:04:10]And like 10 seconds sounds short unless you got 100 drones coming at you.

[00:04:15]Right? That's an eternity in air defense, 10 seconds.

[00:04:19]And when you look at angles, a laser is basically limited to the horizon, which is about 3 miles away at at when you're on the ground, at sea level.

[00:04:28]So, raising the height of the laser helps a little bit, but then the laser is still basically limited to the horizon. It's it's limited to line of sight. So, uh you're going to have to shoot at something. Shooting at something that's like at treetop level when you're below it is going to be extremely hard. And it's not the adversary's job to make things easy for you, right?

[00:04:52]So, if you have one slow drone flying toward you in clear weather, flying in a straight line, not trying to to avoid the laser, and your laser has good tracking, good power, good cooling, clear line of sight, there's no clouds, yeah, that drone might be in real trouble.

[00:05:10]If you have 20 drones flying low in dust, smoke, rain, fog, they're they're trying to evade, uh and there's trees in the way, now your laser operator's having a bad day.

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[00:06:22]It literally pays for itself. Get an exclusive 15% discount on Sally eSIM data plans. Download the Sally app. Use code Macbeth at checkout or scan the code on screen right now and get started today. Which brings us to the first question, have lasers actually shot down drones in combat? As of 2025, Israel says yes. Rafael, the Israeli Air Force, and the Israeli Ministry of Defense, they said that this high-powered prototype laser has intercepted scores of enemy threats during their current conflict in in Lebanon. And the Jerusalem Post later reported that the IDF clarified the number as 35 Hezbollah drones. So, the old claim, lasers have never taken anything down in combat, that's really no longer accurate, at least if we're talking about drones. But notice what I said there, drones.

[00:07:14]Not ballistic missiles, not hypersonic missiles, and not the kind of Tom Clancy Dance of the Vampires cruise missiles coming over the horizon, right? Drones. And we don't even know what type of drones. We don't know if they were Shahed one-way attack drones or they were like DJI Mavic drones. We don't know.

[00:07:33]And this matters because laser defense is actually too broad a term.

[00:07:37]A quadrocopter is not a Shahed. A Shahed is not a cruise missile. A cruise missile is not a freaking ballistic missile.

[00:07:45]And if someone says, "Do your lasers work?" the next question should be against what, at what range, and what weather, and how many targets are coming towards you at once?

[00:07:54]Now, let's talk about cost.

[00:07:56]The viewer who sent me this email mentioned that a laser costs $3 electricity per shot. South Korea said that they got it down to $1.45 per shot for its laser system. Rafael describes the Israeli Iron Beam as having an almost $0 cost per intercept.

[00:08:13]Wow, we're going with a stereotype for that one.

[00:08:16]>> [laughter] >> Wow, Israel. All right, King, you just made a deal. And Reuters reported this Israeli official saying the current rocket interceptors cost at least $50,000, while the laser shot is negligible by comparison. So, yeah, a $1.45 a shot is negligible compared to $50,000, but you know, saying that lasers are essentially $0 per shot is true in the same way that driving to the grocery store only cost you 84 cents.

[00:08:48]Right? It leaves out the price of the car and all the infrastructure. A laser shot might be cheap, but the laser system is not. You still need radar and optics and beam control software, generators, cooling, maintainers, classes, spare parts, trained crews, a truck, a ship, a shelter, something some kind of platform with the laser on.

[00:09:11]I don't know about you. I don't know if you checked lately, but the price of gas is like 450 a gallon when it when it comes to diesel, right? Diesels are running the generators that are powering the lasers. So, that is not free, right?

[00:09:25]So, that $3 shot argument is useful and it's definitely cheaper than an interceptor, but it's still kind of incomplete. The real military question is not was the drone cheaper than the laser, the real question is what was the drone going to hit? If a cheap drone is about to hit a oil facility, a destroyer, a command post, then I don't care if that drone is made of lawnmower parts and freaking desperation, you blow it up.

[00:09:50]All right, Center for Strategic and International Studies has written about this exact trap in air defense economies. People like to compare a small cheap drone to an expensive Patriot interceptor, but it ignores the value of the asset being defended.

[00:10:05]And the commander's requirement to actually stop the threat.

[00:10:08]If you're defending a multi-billion dollar asset, yeah, I might fire a $4 million missile at a $40,000 drone.

[00:10:15]So, it it's kind of dad that that in the email that was said the dad's argument, but arguing that the 101st drone killing the laser, it's it's not it's not wrong, but it is kind of incomplete.

[00:10:28]If the laser is sitting alone in a field like some kind of very expensive Roomba with a death ray, then yeah, it probably can be overwhelmed or destroyed. But that's not how air defense works. You don't just park air defense someplace, you are using it to actively protect something, and there's usually layers.

[00:10:48]And the laser should be part of that layer. Uh you have electronic warfare jam the drone, you might have guns for last-ditch defense, uh you might have interceptor drones that can reach out a little bit further, especially in bad weather, which Ukraine has had great success with. Uh you have missiles for harder targets or for hitting targets from long range. You have camouflage, masking, decoys, mobility, maybe even a dude with binoculars saying, "Hey, that thing over there looks suspicious."

[00:11:16]So, the laser's job to replace every system is the laser's job to reduce the burden on every other system.

[00:11:23]If it shoots down 10 drones, that might be 10 missiles that you didn't have to fire. If it shoots down 50 drones, that might be 50 cheaper threats that didn't force you to spend your expensive interceptors. It It makes the enemy change how they attack because that has value, too. The enemy firing stuff has a dollar value that they have to account for. But, lasers have real problems.

[00:11:47]First problem is line of sight. If the laser got my old laser little Stanley Cup straw here. This This is a straight line, right? This is your laser. Like if this is a hill, your thing is right here, you can only shoot to the top of the hill. I'm using my old microphone as a hill.

[00:12:05]Rain, dust, fog, sand, smoke, salt spray, water vapor, uh that can all scatter or absorb the beam. Atmospheric conditions can even limit laser range and quality.

[00:12:18]Uh another problem is dwell time. A laser may need to hold that energy on target for several seconds, minutes even. And that means tracking has to be perfect cuz you're hitting the same small spot for minutes.

[00:12:33]If that drone is maneuvering or tumbling or hidden by terrain or flying through crappy weather, this gets harder.

[00:12:40]Fourth problem is saturation. Lasers generally engage one target at a time.

[00:12:46]Uh if it takes several seconds to kill one drone and the enemy sends a swarm of drones, you can run out of time before you ever run out of electricity.

[00:12:55]Fifth problem is countermeasures. Drones can be hardened.

[00:12:58]They can tumble. They can use reflective or ablative materials. They can kind of shrug off the laser. Uh drones can fly through smoke.

[00:13:06]They can attack from multiple directions and now you got to swivel that way. Now, uh none of this makes lasers useless, but it does make the job harder.

[00:13:16]Now, if we talk about ships, ships are actually probably one of the best places to put lasers. A ship has more power than truck. It has more space.

[00:13:24]It's got a crew. It's got sensors. It's got cooling options. If you're on a ship, you really care about not letting drones hit you, right? Cuz a ship is extremely expensive and generally not a great place to be on fire.

[00:13:39]Right?

[00:13:40]Lasers can also be uh directed to a very small area. So, if you want to stop a small boat that's coming toward you without killing everybody on the boat, you can just aim the laser at the outboard engine. The engine will catch on fire, the boat's dead in the water, and now they're not a threat anymore, and you didn't have to kill them.

[00:13:57]The US Navy has been experimenting with shipboard lasers for years. Uh Pentagon tested the laser weapon system or laws on the USS Ponce in 2014, and they've been using the same picture ever since.

[00:14:09]The US Navy has the Odin laser dazzler on some destroyers. They haven't really released what it's on yet. Uh and these Odin lasers are designed to counter the guidance and sensors on a drone. Uh it doesn't have enough power to set them on fire, but it can blind them, and hopefully they fall into the sea. And uh Helios, which is a 60 kW laser, was installed on the USS Preble uh with the Navy reporting that it tested the system against aerial drones in fiscal year 2024. Uh but, you know, not even ships are a cheat code.

[00:14:42]Ships move, ships vibrate. The The air at sea has water vapor and salt spray.

[00:14:48]The optics have to survive a marine environment, which can be very unforgiving. And, you know, some destroyers heck, most Flight III destroyers already have power uh constraints cuz other systems like advanced radar also hungry little freaking goblins, right? I mean, look at this latest Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. That is one chunky boy.

[00:15:10]Thick like a torta.

[00:15:15]>> [gasps and laughter] >> Try to fit another system on that thing, and uh she's going to morph into a Slava-class cruiser.

[00:15:21]So, uh yeah, ships are better laser platforms than land-based trucks, but it's still not easy. Land-based systems are harder. Land-based systems have to move. They have to survive dust and heat and mud and rain and bad roads and enemy artillery. That's a big one, too. You know, what happens if a freaking piece of shrapnel nicks that uh nicks that lens? Uh they have to survive their own >> [laughter] >> the bad guys who might attack drones, and they have to survive soldiers who will find absolutely every way to break something.

[00:15:54]And um wherever you have power, you have heat. If a laser is attached to a big generator, that generator makes noise, giving off heat, it needs fuel, it uh creates a signature as well, a noise signature and a thermal signature. And signatures get noticed, and things that notice get targeted.

[00:16:11]The US Army's uh DE-M SHORAD program is a good example. Uh this is a 50-kW class laser mounted on a Stryker to defend maneuver forces from drones, rockets, artillery, and mortars. And the General Accounting Office reported that the first four prototypes were delivered in fiscal year 2023, but the program's transition was delayed for about 2 years because the the demonstrations and experimentation with these systems showed the system was not mature enough.

[00:16:39]Production was kind of pushed out, and the US Army was considering a new configuration based on a platform that wasn't the Stryker. Now, this doesn't mean the army's stupid. It means the army discovered that putting a laser on a Stryker and making it work outside of a test range was hard.

[00:16:56]And this is why you do testing. This isn't a failure, really.

[00:16:59]I get it. The Pentagon absolutely chasing an expensive dream, right? I mean, look, if Darth Vader had to write a CONOPS, fill out a maintenance packet on the you know, the Death Star would still be in dry dock, right?

[00:17:12]But counter-drone lasers are not the same as 1980s-era missile defense. We're not talking about shooting a Soviet ICBM out of space. We're talking about short-range, line of sight firing against drones, which is a much smaller problem.

[00:17:28]And we have enough testing and prototypes and now reported combat use to say, "All right, this probably isn't a dead end."

[00:17:36]All right? General Accounting Office says Department of War used multiple laser prototypes in live-fire demonstrations to shoot down drones, while also working on higher-powered systems.

[00:17:47]So, here's the bottom line. Are lasers good against drones?

[00:17:50]Yeah, I guess for the right drones, in the right environment, with the right sensors, as part of a layered defense.

[00:17:56]Are all lasers good against all drones?

[00:17:58]No.

[00:17:59]Lasers good in dust, smoke, fog, rain, swarm attacks?

[00:18:03]Not necessarily as good.

[00:18:05]Lasers based on ships better than land?

[00:18:07]Probably, yeah, it's looking like it.

[00:18:09]Ships give you more power, more cooling, more sensors, a lot more space. Uh but ships also have weather, salt, motion, power management issues. Should the military keep working on lasers? Yeah, probably.

[00:18:20]You know, lasers the the more research we do, the smaller the lasers will get, the cheaper, the less power hungry. Uh anyone should You shouldn't believe a defense contractor who says lasers are going to make missiles obsolete. They're trying to sell you something, right? Don't let that guy near your procurement budget.

[00:18:37]Okay?

[00:18:39]So, the best way to think of lasers in combat is like this. They are not the future of air defense, they are part of the future of air defense.

[00:18:46]Good counter-drone systems will probably look like radar, electro-optical sensors, jamming, spoofing, guns, interceptor drones, missiles, decoys, and lasers.

[00:18:59]Cuz in air defense, there's no silver bullet. There's no one right way to do thing the the the the things. The the thing that works right now, against this target in this weather, before it hits the thing you're trying to protect, might not do as well as something else that is designed to protect against a different class of weapon system. And if the laser does the job, great.

[00:19:19]It earns its keep then.

[00:19:21]Uh hey, you want to support the channel?

[00:19:23]Ryan Bethea at substack.com or you can watch these videos without ads. Grab my this meeting could have been SIGINT shirt from Bunker Branding. Thank you for watching.

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