The first military Stryker vehicles with a 50-kilowatt laser are coming

In service since 2002, the Stryker combat vehicles are constantly updated. All this to better respond to new threats on the battlefields. A few months ago we learned about the next stage of their development with weapons taken straight from science fiction, and today we know that military Stryker vehicles with a 50-kilowatt laser are coming.

Military Stryker vehicles with a 50-kilowatt laser will be delivered to the soldiers by the end of September. The tests are still ongoing

According to the latest information, the first batch of Stryker military vehicles equipped with the 50-kilowatt Guardian laser weapon will be delivered to the Army Troops Unit in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, by the end of September. Before this happens, the US Army will continue to test them on a smaller scale until early February this year. However, it will not be the “first time” for this weapon, because a year ago at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, tests against various types of drones as well as rockets, artillery shells and mortars were carried out.

These tests, simulations (including virtual ones) and tests are crucial because on their basis the US Army has already made changes in its quest for the Guardian system. The first manifestations of this included the award of the contract to Kord Technologies in mid-2019, which then commissioned the development of the system also by Northrop Grumman and Raytheon Technologies in order to finally choose the best of the two laser weapons.

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The problems forced Northrop Grumman to withdraw, and so “further” Raytheon’s system got through and got a $ 123 million (in dollars) contract. On the horizon, however, we can see the competition from Lockheed Martin, which announced a year ago that if a new competition for a contract in accordance with laser weapons was launched, it would be willing to face the competition. For this, it will use DEIMOS laser technology, which it is to deliver in the form of a demonstrator in the 2022 financial year and create four prototypes at the end of the 2024 financial year.