What's the Best Way to Invest in Military Lasers?

Nearly a decade ago, the United States Navy embarked upon an ambitious project. To enhance the protection of naval warships from threats such as drones, missiles, and small attack boats -- and to simplify supply chains -- it would develop new laser weapons. More than just hi-tech hardware firing at light speed, these laser cannons would run off power from a warship's engines, needing no resupply of bullets and able to keep firing indefinitely, so long as there was still gas in the tank.

In essence, the Navy would develop a weapon with infinite ammo -- a very attractive proposition. But who will build it?

Image source: Getty Images.

Military history

The Navy fielded its first demonstration weapon of the project in 2014 -- the unimaginatively named, but cleverly acronymed Laser Weapon System, or LaWS. For just $0.59 per shot (plus $40 million for the raygun), LaWS could place 33 kilowatts of energy on a target -- not enough to kill a missile, but enough to down a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or set a small boat on fire. Over time, the Navy planned to up the weapon's output to 60 kilowatts, 100 kilowatts, and eventually a full megawatt of power.

So how is that going?

Laser weapon progress report

Funny you should ask, because just last month the U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS) asked the same question, and produced a report to answer it. According to this report, Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) appears to be farthest along in the development of solid state lasers (SSLs) for defense, having built a 150 kilowatt Solid State Laser Technology Maturation (SSL-TM) device that successfully operated on the USS Portland (LPD 27) for more than a year before being scheduled for decommissioning next year.