Why Laser Beams Are the Hottest New Tech in Defense

Odd Lots

In this episode of Odd Lots, hosts Joe Wiesenthal and Tracy Alloway speak with Wayne Sanders, a retired U.S. Army colonel and senior defense research

Key takeaways

• Directed energy weapons such as lasers are transitioning from science fiction to practical military use, with real deployments underway.
• Lasers offer significant cost advantages over traditional missiles by reducing per-shot expenses, though initial system installation remains expensive.

Main topics

• Directed energy weapons
• Laser defense systems (e.g., Iron Beam)

Notable quotes

"It's not just about shooting down drones—it's about rethinking the entire economics of air defense."

Conclusion

While directed energy weapons like lasers represent a transformative shift in defense technology,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the day. My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day. Stories that move markets. Chair Powell opened the door to this first interest rate cut. Impact politics, change businesses. This is a really stunning development for the AI world. And how you think about your bottom line. Listen to The Big Take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (0:35) Hello, Odd Lodge listeners. I'm Joe Wiesenthal. And I'm Tracy Alloway. We're the hosts of the Odd Lodge podcast, and we've got something exciting for you. That's right. So one of the best parts of hosting our podcast is we get to actually meet and interact with our listeners. And we know we have some listeners over in Los Angeles. That's right. So if you're in L.A., we're going to be recording a live show, some live recordings at the Vermont Theater in Hollywood on September 17th. We have some really exciting guests lined up. have some really great conversations planned. So go ahead and get your tickets. You can find those over at Bloomberg.com forward slash oddlots or click the link below in the show notes and come and say hi when you're there. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. Speaker 1 (1:37) Hello and welcome to another episode of the OddLots Podcast. I'm Traci Alloway. And I'm Joe Weisenthal. Joe, I gotta get something out of the way immediately up top of this episode. You know, normally you and I talk for a couple minutes and then I introduce the guest. Yes. I'm just gonna introduce the guest right away and say today we are speaking with Colonel Sanders. I actually, I have some sympathy for... this issue of people with famous military names because my dad was in the Air Force and his first name is Tom. Can you guess what the highest rank was that he actually achieved in the Air Force? Oh, major. Yep. And he always claimed he was under-promoted because people found it funny to have Major Tom in the Air Force. Of course, you have to ask the question of whether he was over-promoted to get to Major Tom. I bet he never thought that story, but it's just as plausible. Speaker 1 (2:27) That's right. Okay, so we'll have to ask our guest whether he was over-promoted to colonel or under-promoted to brigadier general. But we're going to be speaking with Wayne Sanders. He's the senior defense research analyst over at Bloomberg Intelligence. And we're going to be talking about laser beams and microwave weapons. Great. I don't know anything about laser beams or microwave weapons. This is all going to be new to me. I have seen in sci-fi movies that, you know. Speaker 1 (2:52) In theory, you could shoot a laser. Pew, pew, pew. But like, I don't know if that's a real thing or if that's just like a sort of cinematized version of what a visual weapon could be like. I have no idea. Evidently, it is real-ish because there is research on laser weapons and energy weapons, but I don't know anything about how this works. So two things I learned in the course of preparing for this conversation. So number one. Speaker 1 (3:16) Both these things fall under the umbrella of directed energy weapons, which sounds directed energy sounds like something my yoga instructor would say if I had a yoga instructor, which I don't. But at the same time, people have been talking about these forever. They've been in development for literally decades now. And I think the big question is whether or not we're hitting a moment when they might actually become reality. So we know, for instance, that Israel is getting ready to deploy its. Speaker 1 (3:44) Iron beam project. I think there's some discussion of whether it should be called laser dome instead of iron beam, which is kind of funny. But at the same time, we know that the U.S.'s ballistic missile supply has been dwindling because, you know, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to use like weapons that cost millions of dollars to shoot down thousands of drones that are made out of styrofoam and plywood in some cases. Yeah, it's clearly a lot of anxiety about just the sheer number of. Speaker 1 (4:13) Munitions in any context, et cetera. We've been obviously the world is exhausting a lot. You read a lot of stories. If we could replace a bunch of it with lasers, maybe that could be a solution. It's interesting to think, you know, I sort of put this in a category of certain like core science technologies that have been the next big thing for a long time. You probably remember, what was it called? Like nanotech. Remember when like nanotech was going to be? I don't know what's going on with nanotech robots. Another one is quantum computing. There does seem to be a lot of progress, but also when I talk to someone in quantum computer, it still seems like we got a ways to go, et cetera. And so the way you describe this sort of high energy weaponry, I'm curious whether it's one of these things that. Speaker 1 (5:01) Definitely works in theory and ambiguously works in practice. Yeah, so we're going to try to disentangle all of those themes. There's also a really interesting supply chain attached to some of these weapons, obviously. So I'm happy to say we do, in fact, have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Wayne Sanders. As I said, he's the senior defense research analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence and formerly a colonel in the U.S. Army. So, Wayne, thank you so much for coming on All Thoughts. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. Why don't you give us the... Speaker 1 (5:30) I guess, quick overview of your military career, because you come to us not just with, you know, analytical bona fides, but with some actual operational expertise. No, thank you again. So I graduated from West Point in 2002. I went military intelligence, so I had a background in tactical intelligence early on, and then obviously the war kicked off. I transitioned over to signals intelligence, where I spend a lot of time looking at computer network exploitation was the next best thing that was out there, right? So signals intelligence, where you're looking at cell phones and other pieces quickly transitioned into the computer side of the house. Speaker 1 (6:08) I then ended up at the National Security Agency for quite a while with U.S. Cyber Command, and I transitioned over to becoming an offensive cyberspace operations officer, what's known as a 17 Alpha, where I got to spend the rest of my career working on very hard problems for the U.S. military to gain and maintain access to adversary networks, and then when called upon, deliver those capabilities. My last job in the Army was I was the chief of staff for the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Honorable Heidi Hsu, where I got to spend a lot of time. Speaker 1 (6:37) on critical technology areas specifically being developed out. So that's really where I got a chance to geek out and look at what some of the next research and development areas are in these weapon systems. And that kind of translated right over into coming over to Bloomberg Intelligence, where I work on the defense industrial base, emerging technologies, weapon systems, and who are the companies and the trends that are out there for global funding as well. That was amazing. That was perfect. And I'm extremely riveted and excited about this conversation. Talk to us a little bit about your remit here and like the main sort of. Speaker 1 (7:10) just of the work that you do at Bloomberg Intelligence. Yeah, absolutely. One of the areas that we were really, that Bloomberg was really looking forward to moving forward with was going a step further in the aerospace and defense industry area, not just the primes, not just looking specifically at the companies, but looking at the ecosystem as a whole. So not just, okay, we're looking at Lockheed Martin and the PAC-3 interceptors and where some of those margins are, but also then looking at the air defense market as a whole, looking at, as you mentioned earlier, in terms of Speaker 1 (7:40) laser dome versus golden dome. When you start looking at those pieces, it's, okay, there's something called integrated air and missile defense. There's an entire program. There is a big difference between an exquisite munition interceptor, like a PAC-3, and there's much difference between that and a high-energy laser that's going to shoot a potential drone or a ballistic missile out of the sky. So when you put all those pieces together, what does the air defense market look like? What does hypersonics look like? What does semiconductors as part of- Speaker 1 (8:09) of a supply chain concern for the defense industrial base, shipbuilding, you name it. These are some of the areas that we cover down on and be able to focus on everything from budgets, component supply chain, regional components, really you look at the U.S. allies, if you will, adversary considerations that are driving where those markets may be going, and then what's next in the queue. So when you look at air defense, A lot of the stuff up until now, a lot of the directed energy stuff we're going to talk about today is some of those futures piece. Where is it in the R&D line for research and development? And then where is it going and when are we transitioning into procurement? All right. So before we talk about the role of directed energy in, I guess, the military industrial complex and defensive strategy more broadly, let's start really, really simply. Speaker 1 (8:56) Can you define what this actually is? When we talk about directed energy weapons like laser beams or microwave systems, what exactly are we talking about here? Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, a lot of people call it electronic warfare. That's a name that a lot of times ends up being synonymous as well. because you look at electronic attack platforms. You are trying to take specific harnessed energy, and you are trying to use it in an offensive way to cause some type of degradation or destruction to something else. And so when you look at a laser, a laser is essentially a precision weapon. It concentrates energy into a narrow beam and typically attacks one target at a time. Speaker 1 (9:39) But when you look at high-powered microwaves, those weapons attack electronics. It's a larger beam that can potentially affect multiple systems simultaneously. So the Government Accountability Office notes that high-powered microwave weapons can generate peak powers up to like 100 megawatts. But comparing that number directly to continuous wave laser kilowatt ratings is misleading because of the characteristics that are fundamentally different. Speaker 1 (10:04) What I mean by that is a laser is a sniper rifle and a microwave is the electronic shotgun. Think about shooting something with bird shots because a laser, you're trying to scale that power and the microwave is trying to scale the effect. So that's why you're looking at drone swarms and what can you potentially do for that? Right. So the microwave, fire the weapon or whatever, maybe we'll get in the turn. And then suddenly all the drones don't work. Speaker 1 (10:31) Where because their electronics have been fried or something like that, and then a laser is something that could theoretically be pointed at, I don't know, a tank or something like that, and then disable it? Like, is it sort of, let's just say we're talking about the lasers. Is it what I have in mind only from having watching a movie where it's like there is a beam and then it's bad to be on the other side of the beam? It's pretty accurate. You know, when you start looking at how strong those lasers are. Speaker 1 (10:59) you are trying to direct that energy into a single point that is going to burn a hole. It's trying to degrade, right? And not so much on the tank. And it's heat. Sorry. Yeah. Just to be clear, it's that heat that's the destructive force there in the laser. Correct. It's the heat and it's the energy that's being pushed through, right? So if you get that hot enough, you actually can burn through that material specifically for that. When you look at it, normally you're looking at the difference between a drone swarm and potentially like a ballistic missile. Speaker 1 (11:28) because a drone swarm perspective, you're going to want a high powered microwave. You want something that is a wider, a wider range. You want something that's going to be able to hit multiple targets at the same time and cause them to degrade. And it may not, they're not going to blow up, but they might fall out of the sky. Something's not going to work on those. But if you're pointing a laser directly at a single ballistic missile that's coming at you, you want to be able to destroy that thing. You want to be able to knock that out of the sky at that point in time. Speaker 1 (11:56) Where does the energy for these things actually come from? Because when we talk about laser beams, by definition, that's a densely concentrated beam of energy. And I can't imagine that militaries are plugging these things into the grid, although maybe they are, or maybe they're rolling around with like giant battery packs or something like that. But where does the energy actually come from? So the answer is yes to both of your questions, actually. And it kind of goes into some of the history of how lasers came to be and to work those out is you normally call that shore power. A lot of the technology behind lasers and all that requires a huge amount of power that's going to create that specific spot beam that you're actually trying to create. That directed beam of energy starts in these diodes, but you have to be able to then... Speaker 1 (12:40) power those. There is an awful lot of power in the past that was required in order to create that level of beam that you're trying to be able to push out. You want to keep it refined small enough so that it is directed in the area that you want, so it's not going out and refracting off and hitting other targets, right? But you start looking at that as it's one of the reasons why back in the day. Speaker 1 (13:01) some of these lasers were the size of buildings because you required that much energy to be able to create that beam, to be able to create that pulse. And so you're seeing actually the difference really in size, weight, and power. You'll hear that quite a bit when