U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command Technical Center’s Technology Complex hosted the ribbon cutting and dedication ceremony for the Directed Energy Systems Integration Lab on Redstone Arsenal in August 2022. (Photo courtesy of Army Space and Missile Defense Command)
By Troy Turner
Most Alabamians likely never have connected the state’s infamous red clay with laser beams, but when Army Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler scans across Redstone Arsenal’s newest test range, he sees 400 meters of open landscape and a distant tall mud berm perfect for what scientists and now the military refer to as “directed energy” research.
High-energy laser and high-power microwave weapon systems are on the fast track of military research and testing to find the best possible defensive weapons against unmanned aerial systems, or what many civilians oversimplify by calling them drones.
Work for the most effective directed-energy offensive weapon usage also is of keen interest.
The Army’s work at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, along with that of its private-entity partners who have grown a massive high-tech space and missile industry in the local surroundings, are of critical importance to the nation’s defense not just in the future, but in warfare capabilities such as those already being experienced in the ongoing Ukraine-Russian war.
“We want to be able to see just how good we’re able to take care of the warfighter,” or the soldier in the field, Karbler said during an August 2022 ribbon-cutting of the Army Space and Missile Defense Command’s new Directed Energy Systems Integration Lab, or DESIL.
DESIL is a 5,400-square-foot facility designed to provide the Army with a consolidated capability to support a full end-to-end directed energy system, meaning an all-in-one site that allows researchers to generate and test their systems without having to assemble it in one location and move to another for live-fire tests.
“Here, we can go right out these doors to a 400-meter range and test it,” said Karbler, commanding general of the Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville.
“Having done testing for a long time, I find that very invaluable. It speeds up our time testing,” he said. “Instead of going cross-country to a test range, they can come here.”
Why here, in Huntsville, Alabama?
“Primarily because this is where the customer base is centered,” Karbler said, referring to the extensive collection of military and private industry space and missile research and development entities in a municipality known as Rocket City, which includes a long and storied history with NASA.
The directed energy work is vital to America’s military forces for many reasons, the general said, including for the combat soldier on the front lines.
“We’re always trying to make things smaller, safer, faster, cheaper – to help the soldier in the field,” Karbler said.
That includes constantly evolving laser and microwave weapons that already today are a necessary force in the combat arena.
