U.S. Army-Industry Team Integrating Two Strykers with 50 kW-Class Laser Weapon for Combat Shoot-Off Event
A U.S. Army-industry team is integrating two Stryker vehicles with 50 kW-class laser weapon capabilities and support equipment in Huntsville, Ala.
According to the Army, these two Strykers, fitted with laser weapon systems developed by Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, will head to a combat shoot-off event at Fort Sill, Okla. by spring, where they’ll face a series of scenarios designed to test the system and establish threshold requirements for this class of laser.
The result of the combat shoot-off event will lead to the competitive selection of one of the two laser systems for further prototype production, while also demonstrating for the first time that this laser technology is at a mature technical readiness level. The Army expects the operational fielding to take place by Fiscal Year 2022 with the service taking delivery of a platoon of four Strykers.
The combat shoot-off event is part of the Army’s Directed Energy-Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (DE-MSHORAD) prototyping effort which falls under Army’s larger modernization strategy for air and missile defense. The effort is intended to help protect Divisions and Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) from unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), Rotary-wing aircraft and rockets, artillery and mortars (RAM) threats by employing the use of high energy lasers, installed on tactical vehicles.
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