Summary and Key Points: The U.S. faces significant challenges in countering hypersonic weapons, particularly as rivals like China advance in both hypersonic technology and directed energy weapons (DEW), specifically lasers. Hypersonic missiles travel so fast that traditional defenses are ineffective, making lasers a potentially crucial countermeasure.

-Lasers could disrupt or destroy hypersonic missiles by targeting their superheated airflow or blinding their sensors.

-Despite the promise, challenges like power output limitations and line-of-sight issues persist. With China outpacing the U.S. in both hypersonic and laser weapon technology, America urgently needs to develop effective laser systems to defend against these emerging threats.

America Needs Lasers to Stop Hypersonic Weapons

The advent of hypersonic missiles has radically altered the modern battlefield. The fact that America’s rivals, notably China and Russia, have developed these systems well before the US military could develop and deploy these systems is a problem. 

That those rivals have surpassed the Americans and the US military has developed no countermeasure against them is doubly problematic. One technology that has been suggested as a countermeasure to the hypersonic weapons threat that US forces today face are directed energy weapons (DEW). Think weapons like lasers. 

DEW has been something that the Americans have wanted to have for years. When we say “DEW,” we mean lasers. As in, the science fiction kind (though it’s still slightly different but that’s basically what the military wants). 

A weapon that is not limited by lack of ammunition and that has but a single requirement: energy. This technology has eluded the best minds that the US military can employ for decades. In fact, just recently, the Navy appears to have abandoned its long-running pursuit of this fabled technology.

And the Navy did this shortly before America’s rivals in China gleefully announced significant breakthroughs in this technology. 

What’s Needed

To better defend against the threat of hypersonic weapons, the Pentagon believes it will need to create a layered sensor system that spans the globe and is more comprehensive than even the systems that are used to detect and monitor the launch of nuclear weapons. Further, some defense experts have assessed that hypersonic glide vehicles will need to be intercepted in space for maximum security of our homeland. 

This is where the concept of lasers enters the discussion. For those who lived during the Reagan era, this might sound like a rehash of his proposed Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to shoot down incoming Soviet ballistic missiles. Indeed, on some level, it is. 

But it is so much more than that. 

And, for the record, using a layered space tracking capability married to an advanced and powerful laser system to shoot down incoming hypersonic weapons is likely America’s best—and only—hope for reliable defense against a hypersonic weapons attack. 

When a hypersonic weapon is underway, it is traveling so fast in the upper atmosphere that it creates a superheated airflow around itself. For most hypersonic vehicles, this is a very dangerous part of the weapon’s journey to its target. With that superheated airflow around the hypersonic vehicle, the weapon cannot receive orders from its operators and it is basically flying blind, having to rely on internal sensors to navigate until contact can be reestablished with its country of origin. A high-powered laser, however, can penetrate that superheated airflow and destroy it. 

Or, a laser could simply blind the navigational sensors that the weapon is using, sending it off-course, and likely crashing harmlessly to the Earth below.

China is Outpacing the Americans 

Not to be left behind by the Americans, the Chinese have also begun using lasers on their far more advanced hypersonic weapons. In one case, researchers have figured out how to marry a laser beam to sixth-generation (6G) internet so that the Chinese military can maintain constant contact with hypersonic weapons they launched. 

On the flipside of that, a report by Stephen Chen of the South China Morning Post, dated from March of this year, states that Chinese scientists “have found that doubling the strength of a laser causes less peeling of a hypersonic missile’s coating.” 

Therefore, “without the special coating on a hypersonic weapon, it can be prone to overheating, destabilizing or falling apart mid-flight.” 

Some Say Lasers Won’t Work

Still, there are detractors. 

Writing in the defense publication, Sandboxx News in 2023, Alex Hollings rightly identified the power output limitations of modern DEWs. Hollings further identified issues related to line-of-sight. For example, lasers need time to burn through its target (which is why I wrote earlier that these are science fiction weapons but they are different from how we think of lasers in sci-fi movies). 

According to Hollings, “Hypersonic weapons like China’s DF-ZF may be traveling at 2 miles per second or even faster, meaning there should be precious little time to actually destroy the weapon by the time it appeared in the lasers’ line of sight.” 

Hollings’ points criticizing lasers are accurate. 

America Needs Lasers

But they are not the final word on the subject. As, again, the Chinese are showing the world. The Americans have fallen behind now both in the race for hypersonic weapons and, most likely, the race for acquiring laser weapons. 

The fact of the matter is, there are little defenses that can be mounted against hypersonic weapons. The laser is the only viable way for stopping such weapons. And the US defense industrial base seems incapable of building an effective laser weapon to be used against incoming hypersonic weapons. 

Author Experience and Expertise: Brandon J. Weichert

Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is due October 22 from Encounter Books. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

All images are Creative Commons or Shutterstock.

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