Key points:
- The Army awarded AeroVironment a $464.8 million contract for the LOCUST X3, a 30-kilowatt laser built to destroy Group 3 drones like Iran's Shahed-136.
- Company executives say the weapon can down drones in single-digit seconds and is designed to protect against drone swarms at a fraction of the cost of missile interceptors.
- The contract comes as the military's stockpile of ground-based air defense missiles has reportedly been depleted during the Iran conflict, with experts estimating years needed to replenish it.
- If fielded, the Enduring High Energy Laser would become the Army's first official directed-energy program of record, following a 2024 effort on a Stryker vehicle that government auditors called immature.
- The push overlaps with a sprawling, multibillion-dollar Army drone buildup, including the Family of Small Uncrewed Aircraft Systems and a new domestic "Sky Foundry" manufacturing initiative.
A weapon born from a war of attrition
The logic behind the LOCUST X3 is simple enough on its surface. John Garrity, vice president of directed energy systems at AeroVironment, told reporters on Aug. 7 that "LOCUST X3 is intended to be the Group 3 killer," referring to the military's classification for mid-sized drones weighing between 55 and 1,320 pounds. Iran's Shahed-136, a slow-moving but far-flying one-way attack drone, falls squarely into that category and has been launched repeatedly against American troops and partner forces across the Middle East for more than five months. Garrity called the threat "one of the more prevalent" seen in modern conflict, name-checking both Iran and Ukraine as proving grounds for swarm warfare.
The appeal of a laser over a missile is economic as much as tactical. A missile interceptor, once fired, is gone, and each one can cost far more than the drone it destroys. A laser, by contrast, needs only electricity and a clear line of sight. Aaron Westman, AeroVironment's senior director for business development, described the LOCUST X3 as "the apex predator" of the Army's layered drone defenses, telling reporters its purpose is to "thin the herd" so costlier interceptors are reserved for the threats that truly demand them. That framing hints at a deeper problem the Pentagon has been reluctant to say plainly: the current arsenal of anti-drone missiles is running thin, and experts have warned it could take years to rebuild what has already been expended fighting off Iranian drone barrages.
Whether directed energy can actually deliver on that promise remains an open question. The Army's own history with laser weapons is littered with false starts. A previous effort to mount a laser on a Stryker armored vehicle was ultimately judged "not mature enough" by the Government Accountability Office, a quiet but telling rebuke of a program that consumed years of research before stalling out. The Enduring High Energy Laser, first floated in a July 2024 special notice, is billed as the corrective to that failure, and if it clears testing it would mark the Army's first laser weapon accepted as an official program of record rather than a prototype curiosity.
A drone arms race with no finish line
The laser contract cannot be separated from the much larger drone buildup now consuming Army budgets. Congress has already funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into the Family of Small Uncrewed Aircraft Systems, a sprawling initiative meant to equip squads, platoons, companies, and battalions with everything from quarter-pound reconnaissance sensors to long-range aircraft capable of flying for ten hours. Layered on top of that is the Low Altitude Strike and Stalk Ordnance program, which would give combat teams their own one-way attack drones, essentially mirroring the very Shahed-style weapons the LOCUST X3 is designed to shoot down. The Army has also requested $151 million for a domestic "Sky Foundry" initiative meant to churn out 10,000 drones within a year, an admission that America's industrial base cannot currently produce these systems at the volume modern warfare now demands.
What ties all of this together is a military caught in an escalating spiral of its own making, pouring billions into drones on one hand while pouring hundreds of millions more into weapons built solely to destroy the same class of aircraft on the other. Analysts at RAND have already flagged that the Army lacks enough trained personnel and coherent doctrine to operate the drone fleets it is rushing to acquire. Whether a laser system controlled, fittingly enough, by an Xbox controller can restore balance to that equation is a question taxpayers and lawmakers alike deserve a far more transparent answer to than the Pentagon has offered so far.
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