Raytheon Gets $636M For Missile Defense - But Where Are The Lasers?

/.../A recent report by the influential Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments calculated America's various missile defense systems cost anywhere from $3.3 million to $15 million a shot - and it typically takes two shots to be sure of a hit, so double that figure - compared to $1 to $3 million for a souped-up Scud. Even at these rates, the US can probably afford to buy more defensive missiles than impoverished North Korea can buy offensive missiles, but China or even Iran can simply buy more missiles than we can ever hope to counter. That's what CSBA's experts call a "cost imposition" dynamic, and we're the side the costs are being imposed on.

CSBA's solution? It's the same as Reagan's: lasers. A solid-state laser is expensive to build, but once it's built, you can keep firing as long as you have power. Instead of expending a $15 million missile with every shot, hit or miss, you're just using electricity.

"We're currently on a path where an enemy can impose costs against us," shooting our $15 million missiles at their $1 million ones, said the report's lead author, Mark Gunzinger, in a conversation with AOL Defense. "If we can counter that million-dollar missile with a $10 or $20 beam of light, that's cost imposition against them."

Gunzinger doesn't want to abandon interceptor missiles ("kinetic" weapons) in favor of lasers (aka "directed energy"): "You've got to have both," he said. "But right now kinetics is the only part of that spectrum [of options] that we're seriously funding. Directed energy is still a set of technology development efforts that have not transitioned to real-world capabilities. The point is, they're at the point where they could transition given enough support."

Will that support be forthcoming? In an era of tight and uncertain defense budgets, that's not likely.