The Iron Beam

In just a few weeks, the Israel Defense Forces will cross a threshold that air defenders have dreamed about for decades. For the first time anywhere, a laser system called “Iron Beam” will stand beside Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 as part of a fully operational air defense architecture. A beam of coherent light will quite literally help keep Israel’s skies clean.

Iron Beam is a High Energy Laser Weapon System (HELWS), a 100-kilowatt class laser that can burn down a rocket at roughly 10 kilometers. RAFAEL, one of Israel’s “Big Three” defense contractors, has been pushing this rock uphill for over thirty years. The system represents thousands of man-years of engineering, testing, and head-scratching. Having watched it operate, I can tell you it feels like it bends physics. The performance is that extraordinary.

HELWS have long been the holy grail for air defense. Their advantages over kinetic interceptors start with the brutal arithmetic of cost. An Iron Dome interceptor costs on the order of $100,000. David’s Sling is roughly $1 million. Arrow missiles go higher still. During the attack of October 1, 2024, Iran fired about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel. The intercept bill for that 30-minute engagement exceeded half a billion dollars. A laser shot costs only the electricity required to melt the incoming threat. Call it “a few dollars”. The difference is staggering.

Iron Beam was never intended to stop the Fattah-1 and Kheibar Shekan ballistic missiles launched by the Iranians. It simply isn’t designed to output the level of energy to intercept these threats. What it is built to defeat are short-range rockets, mortars, and especially Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), more commonly known as “drones”. And the Ukraine war has shown the world what happens when cheap, abundant drones collide with expensive, finite interceptors. Russian forces have launched mixed salvos numbering in the hundreds. One wave hit 810 drones. Stopping that with Iron Dome would cost more than $100 million. This is exactly the arena where Iron Beam shines.

HELWS also solves the ammunition problem. An Iron Dome launcher carries 20 interceptors and must be manually reloaded. During the October 7 attack, IDF soldiers were killed transporting interceptors to depleted batteries in the south of the country. Iron Beam has what engineers call a “deep magazine”. As long as the generator runs, it keeps firing. That’s the sort of performance you want when you’re facing a thousand-drone swarm.

Iron Beam is the heavyweight of a family of lasers produced by RAFAEL. Iron Beam Mobile, or IB-M, runs at about 50 kilowatts and handles the same targets at roughly half the range. LITE BEAM, a 10-kilowatt system, covers up to 3 kilometers and is optimized for UAS. Iron Beam itself is transportable but not what a person would call mobile. IB-M and LITE BEAM are designed for mobility and can be mounted on combat vehicles to protect maneuvering forces. 

Both IB-M and LITE BEAM have already seen combat. During the recent fighting in Lebanon, the IDF pushed prototypes into the field against Hezbollah drones. These systems exceeded expectations, knocking down dozens of threats and saving lives.

Many nations are trying to build HELWS with mixed success, but Israel was the first to solve three fundamental problems: power, distance, and accuracy. Power came from combining multiple laser beams. Distance came from adaptive optics that reshape the beam as it travels through a turbulent atmosphere. Accuracy came from the same guidance and tracking technologies that make Iron Dome and David’s Sling so effective. The result is a system with no real peer.

For the United States, the most important benefit of cooperation on HELWS is simple: defend the defenders. PATRIOT and THAAD systems operated by American air defenders were built to stop sophisticated ballistic and cruise missiles, not to waste million-dollar interceptors on $300 drones. Israeli HELWS can shield these systems from drone harassment, reconnaissance, and saturation attacks. By wrapping Patriot and THAAD batteries in a laser envelope, the U.S. preserves expensive interceptors for the threats that truly require them.

Collaboration magnifies the advantages. Israel brings combat-validated laser physics, beam-combining expertise, and atmospheric-compensation breakthroughs. The United States brings scale, logistics, and global deployment. Together they can build a layered defense where lasers manage the drone floods and missile systems focus on the threats only they can defeat.

Israel’s investment in high-energy lasers has reached operational maturity, changing both the economics and physics of air and missile defense. These systems deliver cost savings, deep-magazine endurance, and proven reliability against drones and short-range threats. Born from real battlefield need, the Iron Beam family now anchors a new paradigm in air defense, marking a fundamental turning point in modern warfare.

Good things,

Ari Sacher