Stay connected with KayaToday, follow us on Instagram and Facebook for the latest news and reviews delivered straight to you.
Directed-energy weapons have been a staple of military research for decades, long on promise and short on battlefield results. That changed in a small but significant way last week, when the US Army confirmed it had used a high-energy laser system to shoot down three drones near the US-Mexico border, marking one of the first documented combat uses of this class of weapon by American forces.
The operation took place between the night of August 25 and the early morning of August 26, in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. It was led by the Joint Task Force Southern Border, a formation operating under US Northern Command. According to official reports, the drones destroyed were “posing a physical threat to US military personnel and CBP partners,” with CBP referring to Customs and Border Patrol. Three drones is a modest tally, but the significance lies in what was used to bring them down.
What the Locust System Actually Is
The technology deployed was derived from the Army’s High-Energy Multipurpose Laser program, known as AMP-HEL. The specific platform is called the Locust Laser Weapon System, built by AeroVironment, a company specialising in defence technology. AeroVironment delivered the first two functional prototypes to the US Armed Forces in September 2025. Two additional, improved systems followed in December of the same year as the programme was expanded.
The Locust is designed to be vehicle-mounted, meaning it travels with ground forces rather than sitting at a fixed installation. This is a meaningful design choice. Earlier high-energy laser experiments were often tied to large, stationary platforms that required substantial power infrastructure. A mobile, vehicle-mounted system changes the tactical calculus considerably, because it can be repositioned to wherever the threat is.
At 20 kilowatts of output power, the Locust sits in the lower-to-mid range of military laser systems currently under development globally. It is not the most powerful laser the Pentagon is pursuing, but power alone is not the only metric that matters. Against small commercial or military drones, which have become the defining low-cost threat of modern conflict, a 20-kilowatt beam is more than sufficient to disable or destroy a target by burning through its airframe, electronics, or propulsion system within seconds of sustained contact.
Why Drones Make the Ideal First Target
The choice to deploy a laser system specifically against drones is not incidental. Unmanned aerial vehicles, particularly small and inexpensive ones, have emerged as one of the most disruptive weapons of the current era. The war in Ukraine demonstrated in stark terms how cheap commercial drones, costing a few hundred dollars, could be used to harass, surveil, and destroy equipment worth millions. Defending against them with conventional missiles is economically absurd: firing a missile that costs tens of thousands of dollars to intercept a drone that costs a few hundred is a losing equation at scale.
Lasers flip that equation. Once the capital cost of the system is absorbed, the marginal cost of each shot is essentially the cost of the electricity used. That makes laser systems extraordinarily attractive for high-volume drone threats, where an adversary can simply overwhelm a conventional missile defence by sending wave after wave of cheap unmanned vehicles.
The border context adds another layer. Drones have become a routine tool for smuggling operations and surveillance along the US-Mexico border, used by criminal organisations to monitor law enforcement movements and guide shipments. The fact that the Army chose this operational environment for an early deployment suggests the Locust is being evaluated not just for conventional military scenarios but for persistent, lower-intensity threat environments where the economics of laser defence are most compelling.
Confirmed Capability, Open Questions
It is worth being precise about what this operation confirmed and what it did not. Three drones destroyed in a single overnight operation is a proof of concept, not a demonstration of sustained operational readiness. High-energy lasers face real engineering challenges that a single successful engagement does not resolve. Atmospheric conditions, including humidity, dust, and heat, can scatter or absorb a laser beam and degrade its effective range and power delivery. Thermal management, meaning keeping the laser system itself cool enough to fire repeatedly without degrading, remains a significant constraint. And a vehicle-mounted system draws heavily on its power source, which limits how many shots can be fired before the platform needs to recharge or refuel.
None of these problems are insurmountable, and AeroVironment and the Army are clearly making progress. But the gap between “successfully used in a controlled border operation against slow-moving drones” and “fully deployable in a contested, high-intensity conflict” is still substantial.
For the rest of the world, including defence planners in Southeast Asia, this operation is a data point worth studying. Drone warfare is not a distant concern for the region. Tensions in the South China Sea have made unmanned systems a central part of the strategic conversation, and militaries across ASEAN are grappling with how to defend against low-cost aerial threats without bankrupting their procurement budgets. The US Army’s deployment of a mobile, vehicle-mounted laser system against real targets in an active operational environment is the clearest signal yet that directed-energy weapons are moving from the laboratory to the field, and that timeline is accelerating faster than many analysts expected.
