Elbit’s airborne laser program builds on years of Israeli testing and could eventually give fighter aircraft and helicopters a new way to defend themselves and large areas against increasingly common drone and missile attacks.
By Hezy Laing
The next generation of Israel’s air defense may not always need to fire a missile to destroy an incoming missile or drone.
Instead, Elbit Systems is developing a powerful laser that can be carried by an aircraft in a pod and used to shoot down aerial threats from the sky.
Elbit’s new High-Power Laser (HPL) technology was unveiled publicly in 2026 as part of the company’s push to bring laser-based defense into the air.
The system is designed to be carried by airborne platforms and use a concentrated beam of energy to destroy threats such as drones and missiles.
One of the major challenges was shrinking a powerful laser into a package small and light enough to fly on an aircraft.
Elbit achieved this by developing more compact laser components, improving the system’s power efficiency and combining several functions into a single pod.
The result is a high-power weapon that can be carried without turning the aircraft into a flying laboratory.
The idea is relatively simple: rather than launching a physical interceptor, the aircraft points a laser at the incoming target and uses intense energy to damage or destroy it.
That could give militaries a new way to deal with one of the biggest problems on modern battlefields—the growing number of relatively inexpensive drones and missiles.
The importance of the technology has increased as armies face attacks involving large numbers of drones, including small kamikaze drones that can be difficult and expensive to defeat with conventional missiles.
An airborne laser could potentially engage multiple targets while the aircraft remains in the sky, providing another layer of protection over a wide area.
Elbit has been developing airborne laser technology for years, and Israel’s Defense Ministry previously tested an airborne high-power laser against unmanned aircraft.
In 2025, Elbit announced that it had secured a contract from Israel’s Defense Ministry for an HPL combat-jet fighter pod as well as a separate high-power laser system for helicopters.
The company publicly presented its airborne HPL solutions for the first time at the ILA Berlin Air Show in June 2026.
The technology is part of a broader transformation in air defense, in which lasers are being developed alongside systems such as Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow.
The attraction is not only speed but potentially cost.
Once the laser system is operating, destroying a target does not require firing a separate missile interceptor for every engagement.
For Israel and other countries facing growing drone and missile threats, Elbit’s airborne laser pod could therefore offer something increasingly valuable: a reusable weapon that turns an aircraft into a mobile air-defense platform.
