Scaled Directed Energy (SCADE)
Get Smart on SCADE The DoW defines Scaled Directed Energy, or SCADE, as an effort "focused on scaling high-energy lasers and microwave technologies to provide low-cost,…
Scaled Directed Energy (SCADE) Overview
"The science of laser weapons is largely done... We now have a suite of directed energy products that go from low-end to high-end, and now we have to scale production of those. There's never been more effort in the department on this particular capability."
- Emil Michael, Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (DoD Chief Technology Officer)
Testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee's Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, May 19, 2026
Get Smart on SCADE
The DoW defines Scaled Directed Energy, or SCADE, as an effort "focused on scaling high-energy lasers and microwave technologies to provide low-cost, high-impact solutions against emerging threats.” Directed energy weapons use concentrated electromagnetic energy, chiefly high-energy lasers (HELs) and high-power microwaves (HPMs), to disable or destroy a target instead of firing a physical projectile. Directed energy has produced decades of successful demonstrations but comparatively few systems that transitioned to sustained production and widespread operational fielding. SCADE shifts the emphasis from demonstrating the underlying technology to affordability, production, integration, and deployment at scale.
For SCADE, scale is not simply higher laser power. It means moving directed energy from demonstrations to capabilities that can be produced in quantity, integrated across platforms and missions, sustained in the field, and acquired at a cost that supports widespread use. That shifts the principal acquisition questions from whether a system can work to whether it can be manufactured, integrated, tested, supported, and purchased at operationally relevant scale.
As of January 2026, the R&E senior official in charge of SCADE is Dr. Christopher Vergien in the role of Principal Director for Directed Energy. In this role, Vergien provides "strategic oversight for the Department's High-Energy Laser and High-Power Microwave systems" and leads projects meant to "advance and field operational capabilities, preserving American technological superiority."
SCADE is a department-level technology priority rather than a single acquisition program. Several ongoing Service efforts illustrate the production, integration, and transition challenges the initiative is intended to address. The Joint Directed Energy Consortium (JDEC), managed by NSTXL, is a department?backed initiative to accelerate directed energy innovation. It offers industry members access to opportunities, networking, and early insight into SCADE?aligned programs.
In September 2026 the Army awarded AeroVironment a $464.8 million Other Transaction Agreement (OTA)for the Enduring High Energy Laser (E-HEL), the Army's first production contract for a high-energy laser weapon system. The OTA calls for dozens of 30-kilowatt LOCUST X3 systems over several years, moving the capability beyond prototype quantities and into sustained production. The Army is also using a modular open systems architecture intended to support multiple platforms and future upgrades, while AeroVironment is expanding manufacturing capacity to support increased production.
Domestic installation defense is also providing an operational pathway for scaling directed energy. In 2026 the Pentagon named five bases, Fort Bliss, Fort Huachuca, Grand Forks Air Force Base, Whiteman Air Force Base, and Naval Base Kitsap, for a pilot deploying high energy laser and high-power microwave counter-UAS systems. The effort is intended to evaluate the systems in sustained operational use, including power requirements, maintenance, cost, tactics, and integration with installation operations. The pilots are key since it moves the evaluation beyond whether directed energy can defeat a target to whether systems can be operated, maintained, and economically compared with conventional counter-UAS alternatives. Joint Interagency Task Force 401 is also planning a competitive directed-energy “shoot-off” in December 2026 structured so that successful systems could move directly to purchase orders and production. Together, these efforts provide a potential bridge from technology demonstration to operational evaluation and production, the transition SCADE is intended to accelerate.
The Army and Navy are co-funding a containerized Joint Laser Weapon System (JLWS), a containerized laser program to counter cruise missile threats. JLWS is part of the Golden Dome missile defense architecture, which integrates kinetic interceptors, counter-drone systems, and directed-energy weapons. Together, the Army and Navy's budget requests for JLWS total $675.93 million in R&D spending through FY 2031.
In the air, the case for directed energy is hardest to make given aircraft size, weight, power, and cooling limits. The Pentagon has publicly pushed industry to build smaller, lighter, more efficient laser and high-power microwave systems for aircraft and high-altitude platforms, both to defend bases from drone attack and to support special operations missions. The AFRL's THOR system downed a simulated drone swarm in a 2023 test but remains a demonstrator, and its intended successor, nicknamed "Mjolnir," under development at Leidos since 2022, has no announced fielding date; separately, the Air Force canceled its 2024 plan to put a laser on AC-130J gunships after the program missed integration and flight test deadlines.
Public descriptions of Golden Dome's proposed architecture include directed-energy systems for boost-phase intercepts, alongside space-based sensors, AI-enabled battle management, and kinetic interceptors. The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation describes the architecture as still largely conceptual, with significant technical development required. In June 2026, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly described a White Sands demonstration as Golden Dome's "first live intercept test," reporting successful engagements against drones and cruise missiles.
Golden Dome also provides funding and operational context for SCADE. The FY2027 budget request includes nearly $18 billion for Golden Dome across space-based sensors and interceptors, hypersonic and ICBM defense, radars, and directed energy. Defense officials have specifically identified Golden Dome funding as a means to make directed-energy systems smaller, cheaper, and more proliferated, with a directed-energy demonstration planned as part of the architecture in 2028. That makes Golden Dome relevant to SCADE primarily as a potential accelerator for scaling and integration, rather than as evidence that directed energy constitutes a major share of Golden Dome's overall architecture or cost.
SCADE does not appear to have a single consolidated program budget; directed-energy funding is distributed across Service and department-level RDT&E and acquisition accounts. The FY2027 budget indicates increased investment in directed energy, including through Golden Dome, while Congress continues to exercise authorization, appropriations, and oversight through the annual budget process.
SCADE's challenge is not limited to demonstrating technical performance; scaling directed energy will also require an industrial base that is not yet configured for high rate production. Existing DE supply chains were developed around relatively small quantities, creating supplier-depth, lead time, workforce, and critical material constraints. Industry has limited reason to invest in specialized production capacity without predictable requirements and procurement volumes. NDIA identifies a sustained Department demand signal as perhaps the most important step toward creating a scalable directed energy industrial base.
The same NDIA assessment found vulnerabilities in gallium, germanium, rare earth elements, optics, beam directors, batteries, and other key components. Those constraints have become more consequential as China has tightened controls over critical minerals and rare earth products used across the defense industrial base. CSIS estimates that China accounts for roughly 70 percent of rare earth mining, 90 percent of processing, and 93 percent of magnet manufacturing. For SCADE, the implication is straightforward: scaling directed energy is an industrial base problem as well as a technology problem, and higher procurement demand could expose supply constraints that prototype scale programs have not.
- Counter-UAS is closest to production/fielding.
- Cruise-missile defense requires substantially higher power systems and remains more developmental.
- Airborne directed energy continues to face difficult size, weight, and power, plus cooling and thermal-management constraints.
- Golden Dome introduces still more demanding integration and potentially mission requirements. Will it move from an architectural element and demonstration objective into defined requirements and funded acquisition pathways?
- Will directed energy funding remains stable across multiple POM/budget cycles, providing industry the demand signal required to invest?
- Will prototype successes convert into sustained procurement rather than additional demonstrations?
- Can suppliers expand optics, beam-control, power-electronics, thermal-management, and other constrained manufacturing capacity?
- Can the Services converge on common architectures, reusable components and interfaces rather than continuing to develop bespoke directed energy systems?
RAND, "Directed Energy: The Focus on Laser Weapons Intensifies" recommendation is to treat directed energy as one layer within an integrated air and missile defense system, not a standalone replacement for missiles and guns.
RAND, "Directed Energy Dilemmas: Industrial Implications of a Military-Technological Revolution", argues that governments will need new procurement and revenue models, potentially including power-as-a-service arrangements, to keep contractors invested in the technology.
NDIA Emerging Technologies Institute, "Directed Energy Weapon Supply Chains: Securing the Path to the Future," a 2024 report mapping dependencies across the directed energy industrial base.