The Strategic Imperative of Directed Energy in USAF Airpower
Modern warfare increasingly demands the ability to fight at the speed of light. This concept, far from being merely metaphorical, represents the fundamental requirement for military forces to see, decide, and act faster than adversaries in an era of hypersonic weapons, swarming drones, and integrated multi-domain operations. At the heart of this transformation lies directed energy technology, particularly solid-state lasers, which must become a cornerstone of American military capability across all domains: air, land, sea, and space.
The path forward is deceptively simple in concept yet demanding in execution. The United States Air Force must fund laser research comprehensively and place these revolutionary capabilities directly into the hands of operators. As former Air Force Secretary Mike Wynne astutely observed, “We need to push ideas and operators together. This is the way we introduced robots and JTAC systems.” This operational integration approach has proven successful before and must guide our directed energy development strategy.
The Strategic Imperative
The Trump Administration’s strategic goal should emphasize dynamic, all-services concurrent research on employing solid-state lasers across land, air, sea, and space platforms in both strategic and tactical applications. This enterprise is mandatory to ensure no vulnerable seams exist in America’s defensive and offensive capabilities. The integration of directed energy weapons into our Kill Webs which are distributed, multi-domain targeting networks combining sensors, shooters, effects, and data links represents not merely an enhancement but a transformation of American military power.
Fighting at the speed of light has evolved from a conceptual framework to an operational imperative. The development of Kill Webs that integrate all platforms and weapons now demands the fielded employment of weapons that embrace the revolutionary technological promise of lasers and artificial intelligence across all fighting domains. This integration is particularly critical for countering emerging threats such as hypersonic warheads, which compress decision timelines to mere seconds and render traditional defensive systems inadequate.
Operational Realities and Missed Opportunities
The gap between technological possibility and operational reality became starkly apparent at a Directed Energy conference several years ago. The Commanding General of Air Force Special Operations Command made an extraordinary offer to industry representatives: the free use of a C-130 aircraft with open space forward of the wing line internally to mount any laser weapon that could be form-fitted and made functional. Industry’s slow reaction to this opportunity highlights a persistent challenge in transitioning directed energy technology from laboratory to battlefield.
Yet the operational need could not be more urgent. Consider the concept of an “Angel of Death” patrol aircraft, a C-130 equipped with multi-shot solid-state lasers providing overwatch for Navy ships operating close to shore. These vessels, particularly when conducting littoral operations or amphibious support, become sitting ducks for modern threats. The Ukraine versus Russia Black Sea conflict has demonstrated this vulnerability with devastating clarity, as unmanned surface vessels have successfully targeted and destroyed major naval assets.
The Air Force must lead in developing cost-effective, workable solid-state laser weapons with sufficient funding to achieve immediate operational capability. This urgency stems from the Air Force’s hard-earned and valuable intellectual research experience in directed energy. Lessons learned in the air domain can subsequently inform Navy applications for sea-based platforms, but the Air Force should spearhead this effort given its existing expertise and the relative ease of testing and deploying airborne systems.
Historical Parallels: The Battle of the Atlantic
Understanding the strategic importance of integrated air-sea operations requires examining historical precedent. The Battle of the Atlantic during World War II, vividly depicted in the film “Greyhound” based on C.S. Forester’s novel “The Good Shepherd,” demonstrates the life-or-death importance of combined arms operations. German U-boats nearly succeeded in strategically severing the logistical lifeline to Great Britain. Victory came only when sea and air combat components worked together, aided by the crucial intelligence breakthrough of cracking German naval codes.
The Battle of the Atlantic was a near thing until the Allies perfected the integration of sea and long-range air combat units. The lack of air cover in the mid-Atlantic cost countless lives and nearly lost the battle. Today’s military faces an analogous challenge with unmanned systems. Just as the gap in mid-Atlantic air cover created a deadly vulnerability in the 1940s, gaps in our directed energy and counter-drone capabilities create vulnerabilities today.
The Unmanned Threat at Sea
Another deadly threat to naval forces has emerged with the successful evolution of unmanned vehicles, as demonstrated by Ukraine’s operations against Russian naval assets in the Black Sea. Unmanned surface vessels swarming at sea to target and strike various naval and port assets represent the latest iteration of the action-reaction cycle that has always characterized warfare.
These unmanned vehicles have threatened and successfully destroyed logistic vessels, major surface combatants, and amphibious landing vessels both large and small, particularly at chokepoints or when ships are at anchor. Beyond their direct strike capability, unmanned sea vehicles provide targeting data for high-speed missile attacks, creating a game-changing technology for both offensive and defensive combat engagements. This reality demands a response that can engage threats at the speed of light, precisely what directed energy weapons provide.
A Framework for Integration: The Payload Utility Function
To successfully integrate directed energy and artificial intelligence into our warfighting capabilities, we need a structured analytical framework. The Payload Utility Function (PUF) provides such a framework, offering a holistic approach that combines technology, doctrine, and resilience.
The PUF maps payload effects across air, land, and sea fighting domains, creating a scalar utility value representing mission value based on likelihood of success, strategic value, collateral effects, cost-effectiveness, risk, and the essential accuracy of battle damage assessment intelligence. When developed correctly, PUF can rank payload options for any given engagement context, supporting automated decision-making within AI-enhanced Kill Webs and providing thoughtful inputs for optimization, resource allocation, and target selection.
The formula itself elegantly captures the complexity of modern warfare:
PUF = AI × (wS + wP + wR + wC + wE)
Critically, AI functions as a combat force multiplier, not an additive element. This distinction fundamentally changes the calculation. To illustrate: if we assign a notional value of 5 to each independent variable, traditional additive logic yields 25, which becomes 30 if we simply add AI as another variable. However, treating AI as a multiplier, which is how it actually functions, transforms that value to 125. This exponential increase represents AI’s true power in warfare.
The variables within the PUF formula capture essential warfighting considerations:
S represents success probability (0-1), the likelihood a payload achieves intended neutralization given sensor and seeker performance against countermeasures. This variable helps us understand the emerging power of unmanned systems integrated into the fight across all domains.
P denotes strategic value contribution, the importance of neutralizing a specific target to campaign objectives.
R accounts for risk, including side effects, collateral damage, civilian harm, and legal or political consequences.
C represents logistical cost vulnerability as a function of resource consumption, opportunity costs, and rearm time.
E captures escalation cost penalty, the probability of causing undesired strategic escalation multiplied by the severity of potential outcomes.
The weighting factors (w) for each variable emerge from combined consideration of payload choice (p), target characteristics (t), and contextual variables (c) including environment, electronic warfare activities, rules of engagement, escalation risk, and collateral damage sensitivity.
The AI Integration Challenge
Former Air Force Secretary Wynne identifies a crucial requirement for effective AI integration: “For AI to be beneficial as a military force, we need to delegate validation and verification to AI with after-action reviews.” This delegation represents a fundamental shift in how we employ technology in warfare, placing trust in automated systems while maintaining human oversight through systematic review.
Dr. Jeannette Wing, Executive Vice President for Research at Columbia University and formerly Corporate Vice President of Research at Microsoft, addressed these challenges in her 2022 Michelson Lecture at the United States Naval Academy. Her research on trustworthy artificial intelligence examined whether AI decisions can be trusted to be correct, reliable, fair, and safe, especially under adversarial attack. These concerns become paramount when AI systems operate in critical domains that directly impact human lives, precisely the environment of modern warfare.
The integration of trustworthy AI into directed energy Kill Webs requires rigorous validation and verification processes. We must ensure that AI-driven targeting decisions meet ethical standards, comply with international law, minimize collateral damage, and achieve military objectives effectively. The speed of light warfare that directed energy enables demands AI systems capable of operating within these parameters at machine speed while remaining under meaningful human control.
The Path Forward
Our future security belongs to those who can see and act faster than their adversaries. The strategic integration of directed energy weapons, particularly solid-state lasers, into Air Force operations represents not a luxury but a necessity. The combination of directed energy, Kill Web architecture, and trusted AI creates a synergistic capability greater than the sum of its parts—precisely what the multiplicative nature of the Payload Utility Function illustrates.
The operational imperative is clear. Airborne platforms equipped with directed energy weapons can provide protective overwatch for vulnerable naval assets, engage swarms of unmanned vehicles, counter hypersonic threats, and perform numerous other missions impossible with conventional kinetic weapons. The Air Force’s unique position—combining relevant research experience, suitable platforms, and operational flexibility—makes it the logical service to lead this transformation.
Success requires several concrete actions. First, substantially increased and sustained funding for directed energy research and development. Second, aggressive transition of proven technologies from laboratory to operational units. Third, close collaboration between researchers, industry, and operators to ensure technologies meet real-world requirements. Fourth, development of doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures for employing directed energy in integrated Kill Webs. Fifth, continued advancement of trustworthy AI systems capable of operating at machine speed within appropriate ethical and legal constraints.
Conclusion
Modern warfare demands capabilities that can operate at the speed of light. Directed energy weapons, integrated into multi-domain Kill Webs and enhanced by trusted artificial intelligence, provide exactly these capabilities. The United States Air Force must lead this transformation, leveraging its research experience and operational flexibility to field effective systems rapidly.
The formula is simple: fund the research, develop operational systems, and get them into the hands of operators. The stakes could not be higher. As history demonstrates, from the Battle of the Atlantic to the Black Sea, failing to achieve dominance in emerging warfare domains costs lives and risks strategic defeat. Success requires vision, investment, and the will to transform doctrine and force structure around revolutionary capabilities.
The speed of light is no longer merely the universe’s speed limit for it is the operational tempo demanded by modern warfare. America’s Air Force must rise to meet this challenge.
Featured image was generated by an AI program.
The 2022 Naval Academy Michelson Lecture: Delivered in a Time of Strategic Warning