School of War - Ep 267: Michael Lurie on Israel’s New Laser Weapon

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

Michael Lurie, CEO and President of Rafael USA, joins the show to explain how High Energy Lasers and Iron Beam will change missile & air defense, not to mention warfare itself, forever. ▪️ Times 02:34 The evolution of missile defense 05:09 Iron Dome & Iron Beam 08:04 How do lasers work? 15:16 Limitations 20:07 Integrating systems  25:28 Future applications  30:09 Lessons from field testing 40:15 American interest Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find more content on our School of War Substack

Freaking laser beams, man, the Lost in Powers reference for you there. Today we're going to talk about one of the potentially most interesting battlefield developments of the decade, the delivery of a functioning laser system, iron beam, designed to intercept rockets, drones, and missiles to the Israeli defense forces just a few days ago. For some time now, defense professionals have known that we have a huge economic problem with missile and drone defense, that our interceptors, simply cost too much compared to the at-time's relatively cheap threats they are shooting down. The promise of this new technology is that once it's deployed, each intercept will cost you

about the price of a happy meal. Will it work? How will it work? What might such technology be able to do in the years to come? Let's get into it. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing ground. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining the School of War.

I am delighted to welcome to the show today. Michael Lurie, he is the CEO and president of Raphael, USA, which is, of course, the American-based operation of the Israeli firm, Raphael. Mike, you thank you so much for joining the show. Thank you for having me here. Our subject today is going to be Iron Beam, directed energy, laser weapons, which of course the big news of recent weeks is that Raphael has delivered a system for tactical employment in Israel. We're going to come to that. But first, I thought it would be

interesting and valuable for listeners. If you could tell the story of missile defense in Israel and how it works at present before the integration of directed energy, I'm sure most listeners have probably heard of Iron Dome. We should talk a little bit about what that is and how it's put together in functions, but there's more, as you know, there's more to Israeli missile defense and air defense than Iron Dome. Give us kind of an overview of how things work. Okay. So first, before we dive into that, I wanted to say that this entire idea of missile defenses is pretty new. It's been around for about 15 years. If you talked to Israelis 15 years ago, there was no missile defense. There was air defense, regular standard air defense against airplanes. But when someone shot

rockets, mortars or missiles at Israel, they fell in Israel. And about 15 years ago, the first Iron Dome battery was delivered to the IDF. At that point, it looked like science fiction. No one really thought something like that could work. And here we are 15 years later. And this system is a standard in Israeli life. Every boy, every girl in Israel knows what Iron Dome is. I think most people around the world know what it is. And it's saving life. It's been saving life for years now. I think that today we're going to talk about the laser. And before we start, a lot of people in the last few years have approached me and told me, well, laser, that's kind of science fiction. That's not real. It's not really going to work.

Well, I think different. I think this is working. I think it will work. And I think that if someone will be speaking here, not in 15 years, in five years from today, this will be something that no one understands how we lived without it. And yes, as you said, this will be part of the missile defense system of Israel. Let's talk about missile defense. So the idea that Israel is incorporating is a layered missile defense. It has mainly three layers today. The lowest level is an iron dome, which protects against short-range threats, like mortars,

a rockets. The higher level is called David'sling. which deals with longer-range missiles, larger missiles, and the highest level is the arrow, which defends against ballistic missiles and missiles coming from outside of the atmosphere. That's the situation today. As I understand it, Iron Beam, as it's going to be employed here,

is really to, I guess, either supplement or ultimately replace, you can clarify what the long-term thinking is there, the lowest level of the system, Iron Dome, which I've seen Iron Dome interceptions in person, so on a purely selfish level, I'm grateful for its existence. Why is the system designed to operate at that kind of most tactical

or lowest altitude level? Okay, so first of all, you're correct. Initially, Iron Dome is there to complement not to replace Iron Dome, Iron B, my mean, is there to complement, not to replace Iron Dome. Two things to think about. First of all, the cost of,

interceptions is today very high. Our enemies shoot very, very cheap missiles at us, and we use expensive interceptors. Iron Dome is the cheapest interceptor available by far cheaper than anything else, but still, the cost is much higher than a threat. And we were looking for something to change that equation, hence the laser. You don't have to keep stockpals. You just keep a system, and the stockpile is the electricity. That runs the laser. So that was the main reason for building. On the other hand, the laser does not work in heavy cloud and in rain.

It cannot penetrate. It's physics. We can't penetrate. If you can't see it, you can't shoot it. So we're going to use the laser, but we're also going to use iron dome. As for replacing iron dome and later on other things, that has to do. with how the laser works, and we'll talk about that probably in a few minutes. The level we're talking about now, the system we're talking about us right now is a system designed to complement

iron dome only and not the higher levels. Now, let's talk a little bit about cost, these interceptors for iron dome. Well, first of all, they're physical items, right? So they have to be manufactured and transported and everything else. So that's just one layer that presumably iron beam sort of helpfully short circuits, if you'll forgive the expression. And then two, I mean, how much does, these are the Tamir interceptors, right, and manufactured, if I'm not mistaken, in the great state of Arkansas. How much does one cost? Like when you fire a shot, what is the cost of that interceptor? I won't get into specific details, but the Iron Dome interceptors today are manufactured in Israel and in Arkansas, in Camden, Arkansas. As you stated, this is

quite new right now. And the cost is in the area of 100, 100. $200,000 to $200,000 per interceptor. That is approximately the cost. And what do you think the cost of a shot of iron beam is going to be? Electricity. So. And not too much. Dollars, tens of dollars, something like that.

Not more than that. Of course, you need to buy the system and build it, but once it's there, the cost of every interceptor will be very, very, very low. That'll change the equation completely. The idea is to make shooting. rockets at Israel, something that you don't want to do. Well, I'm doing it. So let's talk about how this stuff actually works.

Let's talk about why, you know, it's 2026 that we're having this conversation and not, you know, a long time ago. I mean, as you know, there was a discussion about, you know, directed energy weapons for missile defense, the United States, the 1980s. I mean, the notion of lasers is weapons. I don't know how far it goes back. I mean, H.G. Wells talks about this in War of the Worlds. worlds. I mean, this is a this is an old, old idea. Right. Very present in pop culture throughout the Cold War. And yet here we are. We're well into the 20, we're now in the second quarter of the 21st century. And it's really just, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was so

striking about this news was that this delivery of iron beam in Israel is the first delivery for tactical use of a directed energy weapon or at least a laser weapon. Right. Right. Because there's other kinds. We had the CEO of Epirus on, I think last year, to talk about microwave weapons. But the first of any such delivery anywhere in the world that I'm aware of as opposed to testing and all that kind of stuff. Why? What's so hard about this stuff? So first of all, building the laser source itself is not that easy. And originally, laser sources were very weak. And we had laser sources that were watts and then tens of watts and hundreds of watts. And to Today we have a laser that is 100 kilowatt.

That's 100,000 watts of laser. That was one thing to overcome. But I think this has been overcome for quite a while already and still nothing really materialized out of it. And that was because there were three other considerations that were overlooked by a lot of people. And I think that we took care of these things in the last few years. Number one, laser, we say laser focused.

Laser focused, yes, but the atmosphere causes it not to be focused. So when you shoot a laser to 100 meters, no problem. But when you start shooting a laser kilometers away, the atmosphere causes it to disperse. And the laser is no more laser focused. And if you shoot 100 watts of laser, only one watt will reach the target.

And then the leisure does not do any damage, does not destroy the missile. And that was one thing to overcome. The way we overcame that was an ingenuity of Raphael scientists and engineers. They came up with a concept called adaptive optics. The idea there was to maintain the laser focused over distance. So if you shoot a target at 10 kilometers, the laser reaches the target at 95. to 99% of its energy that came out of the laser itself. That was one thing.

And I think that was a huge breakthrough made by Raphael. And I think that today, Rafael is still the only company in the world that possesses this kind of technology. I'm sorry, I want to step back even further. Listeners have heard me joke about my lack of technical expertise about virtually anything many times. I'll just tell you, Michael, the infantry is my professional background. So you can just adjust everything based on that.

Okay, so it's focused light of some kind, but what is a laser? Like, how does one make a laser? Yes. A laser is a beam of light, which is very, very focused and a very coherent, okay, in a single frequency. It's a big deal to make something like that, but there is a physical way of doing it. Everybody understood that this is a way of transmitting very, very focused photon energy. light energy over distances. The only thing is that's theoretical.

In practice, as I said, the atmosphere causes this energy to lose its focus over distance. And when it hits, it's like a flashlight that's very, very focused, but when you turn your flashlight away, the beam becomes huge. And then the light is not that strong.

So when you look at something very close to the flash to you with a flashlight, It gets a lot of light. But when you turn the flashlight away, the light is not that bright anymore. Same thing with the laser, only on a much larger scale and much more light. So if we think of a flashlight,

then a laser gives you about a million times more light than a flashlight, okay? Maybe even more than a million. But if it goes away, if it becomes a large beam, then again, the light isn't that bright anymore. And we want very, very light, bright because that light is actually energy.

And energy means heat. And when you hit a target with a lot of heat, it burns. And that's why lasers today are used in industry for cutting and welding, but that's very close in proximity. That's it. 5 centimeters, 10 centimeters, which is salt. The problem here was to get that same intensity

at 10 kilometers. That was the big deal. And that problem was solved to what I explained a few moments ago. And then, you know, another aspect that strikes me has probably been a factor in development of this stuff

is in addition to the, you know, the tube or whatever that's actually emitting the beam. Presumably there's all kinds of other stuff that goes along with it and you have to get it into some sort of shape that is tactically sensible.

That is to say you can't have, you know, an enormous structure everywhere you want to deploy this laser. It's got to be, you know, presumably this is the kind of technology we want eventually on ships or aircraft or things like that. So it has to be able to go on that stuff. What part of the challenge was that of just, I'm going to call it the physical plant of the laser, but there's probably a better term for it. Right. Getting that under control. Right. So that has to do with energy and cooling of the system. And that is something that we have taken care of. But I think that as you see, said if we want to get it on a ship or on a truck, that has been resolved. It's inside of a 20-foot

crate. Okay. If you want to put it on a plane, that's a different issue. We're not dealing with that right now, but on ships and on ground that is very, very feasible. Right now, we've shown it work in the ground arena. So you mentioned atmospheric conditions as being one kind of issue for employment. You mentioned whether, let's work through these issues. They're just baked in. This is just nature of the system. Every weapon system has limitation. These are limitations for this weapon system. I've also heard, well, I mean, just to speak in the most basic logical terms, it's the line of sight, right? So, you know, the laser, I presume can't can't yet bend around things. Right. So it's a straight line. So we'll add that to it. And then I, there's also a swarming

question, yes, of how many targets can be prosecuted over a particular period of time. So there's all these considerations and limitations. How do you think about those in terms of the employment of this weapon system? You know, how should a military, obviously the IDF in the case that we're talking about, but things that succeed in Israel have a way of being sold abroad, the United States. As you well know, you're based here. The president has called for the creation of a Golden Dome missile defense system, presumably directed energy is going to have to play some role in there for that to it all be practical or cost effective. How should How should the people who are ultimately responsible for tactically employing this stuff,

think about these limitations? First of all, I said that this atmospheric problem was one thing. There were two other things that needed to be overcome. One, you're trying to hit a target at 10 kilometers. That means the target is the size of, let's say, you want to be precise, the size of a cent at 10 kilometers. That precise you want to be. because when you hit a target, you want to hit it in the right place

exactly where you want it and stay there. So you need to be precise and you need to have fine tracking. So if you have the energy and you hit the target in the right place and you stay on that place, you will shoot it down quickly. And that's the goal because if you shoot it down quickly, you can immediately go to the next target. We're talking about swarms. So the idea is to engage the target at a distance.

and do it quickly. Think about an interceptor. When you shoot something at a country, it takes time, the threat goes up, you detect it, and then you send an interceptor to intercept it. The interceptor takes time. The threat is meanwhile coming closer. Once it hits the interceptor hits the threat, it has one chance of doing it. And then you have to shoot another interceptor for another threat. The laser, the minute, the minute, the interceptor hits the threat. The laser, the minute, the interceptor hits the threat, the threat, the you see the threat coming over the horizon, immediately, you hit the button of the laser, and the laser is the speed of light. It hits the target immediately. So if you shoot several interceptors simultaneously, you're actually starting to work against them, to engage them far away from you. You don't have to send interceptors to meet them halfway. You're doing it over enemy territory. And the further you shoot the laser, the more accurate the laser is, the more energy you have, the farther you can do that, and the more targets you can engage simultaneously. And I guess if we're not talking about aircraft at this stage of development, then terrain

matters a lot here. Elevated terrain is going to be very important to getting the most efficiency out of this system. Yes. Although the threats, very high. So you don't want to be behind the mountain, okay? But if you're not behind the mountain, then you can see the threat coming. Of course, if you're in a higher position, that always helps in any military operation, even as an infantry guy, as you said, you always want the higher ground. Yeah, I was very lucky that the part of Afghanistan I was in was very flat. I always felt great sympathy for my comrades, mostly in the army who were out in the east. Yeah.

When you say seeing, seeing the target, so obviously there's this robust, integrated air defense system, Israel, that, you know, the United States, we all have these systems, the bad guys have these systems. Though it turns out Israel and the United States are not too bad at taking them apart when we feel like it. So there's radar, presumably. There's tracking of this stuff through various means when it's very far away. But then is it, there's an intermediate step, right?

there's some sort of detection of the target, and then there's the lazing of the target. But does the system have some other means of tracking the target beyond radar or getting feedback on the laser effects? Like, how does it actually work? So I didn't say this up until now, but I was a part of this program when it was just started about eight, nine years ago. And one of the first, and I think best decisions we made was that we were not building a system. we were building an interceptor.

There's a difference. We have a system. It's called the Israeli air defense system, Iron Dome David's Sling Arrow. It has radars. It has electro-optics. It has everything it needs to detect targets. We didn't want to take over that.

We said we wanted to build a system that could come into that system as an intercept. So now, if today, the Israeli air defense system has three layers, iron dome, David Sling and Arrow. Now it has four systems. Add iron beam into it. Other than that, it will behave

like any kinetic interceptor, only laser, which means that if another country has an air defense system that incorporates several systems, different systems, we can plug into that system with the laser. It's open architecture.

It just fits into any air defense system as an intercept. think of it as a missile, only energy. Yeah, and just to linger on this question of employment and limitations and various considerations, it struck me that, you know, whether the general trend in the evolution of military technology over the last, I don't know, 50 years, maybe more, has been the lessening importance of weather, right? It's not a factor today, but it's much less of a factor that it was, say, in 1970 for

aviation, variety of other things. I mean, pilots can see through stuff and operate and stuff they never could before. And there's all kinds of all-weather systems. And now weather matters a lot here, maybe actually less so in Israel. It's not that it won't matter at all, but the weather's pretty decent in Israel much of the time. But I could imagine other parts of the world, Europe, Asia, etc, where you're going to have a system that is pretty dynamite and effective on good days. And then all of a sudden has periods of real limitation and that suddenly becomes a planning question where you'll need redundancy you'll need non-directed energy systems available and the bad guys will know that and i you know i haven't thought through the sort of decision tree of how this will all work but it's it's complicated how this is

actually you know it's not and this is not a criticism no no one weapon system is the silver bullet for anything but it's complicated how this is going to work into planning and how in a way whether is now will be more important the more of these systems get deployed. So the first step is the air defense system, the Israeli air defense system or any other air defense system, has to be able to make that decision automatically. When it sees an interceptor, a threat coming in, it has to decide, first of all, what kind of threat is it?

Does it need Iron Dome? Does it need David Kling? Does it need arrow? That's a decision it makes. second thing, can it use a energy interceptor or a kinetic interceptor? Those are all questions that will be asked. I think that missile defense has to be a layered solution and has to have multi-options.

No one option will resolve anything because if you build one option, the enemy will find a way to get over it. This way you're building several options. And look, even on a bad day, drones will come flying lower below clouds. The laser system will be effective against them. It will not penetrate heavy cloud, but it will take care of anything that is below the clouds.

And most days, there is still a lot of threats that can come under the clouds. I think that drones has given an example. It turned out to be a tough target for, kinetic interceptors. They can engage mortars and missiles and rockets, but the drones that change the way they fly can fly slower and faster are a tough target. For a laser, they're the easiest target available. So again, you have to build a very smart system that will make these decisions split second.

There's a lot of algorithm there. Yeah, I've talked to pilots, IAF pilots now that I think about it, who have done drone intercepts, you know, from there. I think the conversation I remember, I think, was with an F-16 pilot. Yeah. And he described it like, oh, what was it? It was something like chasing a toy car. A quidditch game.

A quiddish game. Well, he describes it's chasing a toy car like, you know, your kid might operate with a handset, you know, in your Ferrari. Right. So you're in your Ferrari and you're trying, this thing's zigging around and it's really slow and you're really fast and really powerful. And it's frustrating. And you have to have a whole stuff different. You have to sort of retrain your mind. in terms of how you're used to operating to get it.

And here we have a system that seems much better purpose to regret. Let me ask you to speculate about the future, whether in Israel or even, you know, the United States, Ukraine, beyond. All of the headlines today, all the discussion are about how drones are changing the nature of warfare at whatever level, short range through the big stuff, you know, the shahads that fly long distances, things like that. and no one's really sort of cracked this code and we you know our interceptors cost too much money and we're just talking about you know shooting the stuff down with f-16s god knows how much

that costs how long is it how bullish are you and how long is it that this is really a fundamental intervention in this problem that is to say that five years from now you tell me the time is it five years from now 10 years from now 15 years from now where the significance of the drone intervention into warfare is going to have finally met its decisive countermeasure. I think this is going to be an ongoing pursuit between attack and defense like the entire history of war. It will shoot down drones. They'll come up with new drones, more drones, less drones, faster drones. I think the laser is a significant pillar in the defense against drones, I think that today it's probably the best equipped system to deal with drones.

There's nothing that good. All the kinetic interceptors are more expensive and less capable of dealing with drones, and therefore I think that the laser will be a very, very worthy adversary for drones. I'm not kidding myself. There's no silver bullet for anything. the other side will think of new strategies, new systems, and we will think of new ones, and this will go on. As long as there's war, there'll be new systems, new defense system and new attack systems.

But I think the laser is a huge leap forward, huge. I think that just as I said in the beginning, when we looked at Iron Dome 15 years ago, I don't think anyone dreamed it would do what it does today. And I think that with the laser, it'll be tenfold more surprising. I think that when people talk of laser defense systems in 10, 15 years from now, they will do things that no one even dreamt of at this stage. They will be built on platforms that no one thought about,

and they will be doing, be capable of doing things that we did not think. Well, let's play that line of thinking out because that's really interesting. So you said this system is sort of 100 kilowatts when it shoots, which I guess that's good for drones. I presume that's good for mortars, things like that, sort of smaller, lower altitude, tactical stuff. Still kill you if it hits you. So it matters a lot. You know, I guess it's a question of how you get the power up. So what can you do at 300 kilowatts?

You know, how high do you have to be to get, you know, a ballistic missile, for example, because I'm guessing 100 kilowatts is not. enough for a ballistic missile, but you tell me. And so how do you, how you get the power up is one consideration, how you keep the physical plant under control is another consideration. How you can get it onto airplanes is a huge consideration because then you're talking about going after enemy systems in their boost phase as they're coming off the ground, maybe even pretty far away from your country. So help us think about the future, the challenges, the timelines in that regard, not just getting more sophisticated in shooting down drones and lower altitude stuff in this kind of cat and mouse game that is just part of the history of warfare that you very well described.

But these other targets at higher altitude, how is that all going to shape up in the years to come? So I think what you said right now is a real issue here. One of the decisions, you can at any point of time, any system you build, you can argue why it doesn't do everything? It can do more. Why deploy a laser system that intercepts rockets, mortars, and drones and not wait until it intercepts ballistic missiles? Because I think one of the things

that you gain by deploying a system is you learn things that you never dreamt of. It starts working and then a soldier, an operator, not a scientist, not a rocket scientist, just an operator, a soldier, comes up with a question. You come to him and he comes up with a question and say, wow, I never thought about that. And the opportunities that lay ahead,

we don't know all of them. Everything you said is right. We need to have stronger lasers. We need them to go further. We want to hit ballistic missiles. But what else? What else can this thing do? Where else can we deploy it?

Who else can operate it? Look, I'll give you an example. We've been talking about drones for the last few years, everybody was talking to them, everybody was talking about the threat. I think what the Ukrainians did in Russia when they planted the drones inside Russia

and flew them from far away, caught everybody by surprise. If you think about it, that's simple. How come nobody thought about it? It's trivial. But until you have the drones, until you have the capability, you don't think of these things.

Operating a system, techniques of operating, are just as important as that technology and the capability. And I think that by deploying the system early, as early as possible, we will learn a lot in the next few years, not only make the lasers stronger and the system more robust, but we'll learn how to operate and we'll learn, we'll get opportunities to do other things.

And if you meet someone here in three years and talk about lasers, the discussion will be completely different. Yeah, and I'm sort of kicking myself here, too, for just constructing the first half hour of this conversation strictly around air defense, which is the sort of obvious application where this real need exists. But I'm guessing at 100 kilowatts,

you had mentioned boats earlier. If you can shoot down a drone at 100 kilowatts, there's presumably targets that are on the water or on the ground that, I mean, I don't think I want to get shot by 100 kilowatt laser. So I assume there's all sorts of other ground applications that we might discuss here. Not really at this point.

There are other considerations that need to be taken regarding ground and naval applications, but I do think that putting it on a boat to protect a boat against naval threats is something that will be considered in the very, very near future. It's not working yet, but it's something that we will be thinking of, and everybody's thinking about that. ground application at this point, we have not thought about that yet. Can you share more about what the obstacles are in terms of deploying this stuff sort of more on a horizontal plane as opposed to taking stuff out of this guy?

There's a lot of problems. I don't want to get into that right now, but there's a lot of problems to consider. And at this point, I don't think it's something that is, I don't think it'll help that much at this point. Okay. Just one example is the ground. I mean, you need line of sight. Any tree, any mountain, any hill will be an obstacle. So I'm curious about the testing phase of all this stuff that we're now, I mean, obviously, you continue to test, but we're now transitioning into some operational use.

You've had, as everyone will know, you've had a big war in Israel for the last few years, sort of threatens to bubble back up at any moment. I saw some reports in the press that this system was undergoing field. field testing, as it were live. That is to say, there have already been tactical employments of the system to figure it out. Is that true? How did that work? What did you learn? Help us understand that part of it. Okay. So I didn't talk about this up until now. This is a good opportunity. The system itself is not one system. We have three levels. We have the high energy lasers, the 120 kilowatt laser that we talked about up until now, which is called iron beam. There's another system that's called Iron Beam M, which is about half the energy. And there's a smaller

version that gets on a pickup truck that is called light beam, which is a 10 kilowatt. The light beam, for instance, can take down small drones at distances of several kilometers. The other systems are larger for larger threats. The systems that were operated in Israel were the smaller one and the medium one. The high-energy laser did not operate during the war. It was the two lower levels

and they, as was publicized, had some very good encounters mainly with drones but not only. And I think what I said before about starting to get friction with real life, getting the system, getting the engineering

out to the field, I think that incorporating them in the defense of Israel helped us a lot in improving the systems and moving ahead. We learned a lot much more than we expected. That's why we're optimistic that we'll learn a lot more. That's fascinating just to think about how that program would have worked in the field, just because, you know, it's sort of alien sitting here in the United States. I mean, we have, obviously, you know, special operations and we've, we've, you know, we were, we intervened in Iran last year, but there's not, you know, there's not daily combat, generally speaking, for most of the United States military.

Unlike Israel, where after October the 7th, you have plenty of bites at the apple at air defense, unfortunately, for the people of Israel. And so I was just curious, you know, almost from a policy perspective, how you do this. I mean, you're taking this untested system into the field. Presumably, it's time, so you get to try it for a few seconds, and then if it doesn't work, you fire the iron dome or are you firing the iron dome and the laser at the same time? I don't know how much you can share here, but I'm just kind of fascinated

how you manage something like this in real life when you don't really know it's going to work. Right. So I think that necessity drives ingenuity. The necessity was real. And I don't have to tell you about it. Our enemies shot at us tens of thousands of waters, missiles, drones, tens of thousands.

We needed to do whatever we could. So when you have that threat, and as you said, even a small drone, if it hits a person, it kills him. It's that simple. You're protecting your family. It's not even just protecting soldiers. It's our own cities. It's where our families live. And when you understand that that's the task, you're willing to take the chances.

You're willing to try and maybe sometimes fail, but you'll try anything. and we were very successful. Of course, we do a lot of testing before and we make sure that it won't be a complete failure, but we take the system out and test it also in the field. So you have this high energy, you have this laser system now getting deployed. I know this is not the project,

but I don't know if Raphael is also working on this piece of it or if others in the space are. I know others are. This question of high-powered microwaves, the other kind of directed energy weapon, And if you see that as part of Israel's future defensive architecture or just from where you sit working on the laser project, how that piece of things is proceeding. I won't go into details on the microwaves, but I can say that, as I said, we need a layered approach. Later approach means different kinetic interceptors and different energetic interceptors and maybe in the future other things that we don't know right now.

But any form of interception available will be tested and will be developed and will be deployed eventually because the first thing you have to consider is defending your cities and your country. Before you do anything else, because otherwise Israel is a small country and you can reach any point in Israel from our neighboring countries. The first consideration we have is to defend our people, our families, and we will use any kind of technology available, be it energy or kinetic, to defend them. You know, I don't have to tell you. Well, you're CEO of Raphael USA, so you sort of embody what I'm about to ask about. But, you know, American-Israeli co-development is often a feature in big projects like this. I just want to ask you what the American role, if any, was in the development of Iron Beam. And, you know, obviously here in the United States, we have the president calling for Golden Dome. We have, you know, forces deployed worldwide in an environment where air defense issues are critical.

Missile defense issues are critical. So what is the American aspect of this system? What has it been? And, you know, what do you see as the interest level in our Department of War for this kind of stuff? I think we've been spending in the United States, if I'm not mistaken, something like a billion dollars a year all in on developing direct energy weapons. but I'm not aware of anything actually being deployed in the field out of testing. So just help us understand the American side of all this. Okay, so we're seeing a lot of interest from the American side.

The U.S. is also investing money in the Israeli program, helping us out with, mainly with the production part. And there is ongoing meetings and discussions on all levels. From the management, top management, down to the engineering people on working together on these programs, on this laser program. And the idea is eventually to help one another develop these systems. We have our version. The U.S. has its own requirements for their system. And I hope that each country develops eventually the laser system it needs and gets help

and incorporates things that the other country developed and built, because each one has its own strengths. Can you speak a bit to the differences? Like, what are the American requirements? I don't know if some of this is public. Sometimes these procurement things are public in terms of what the United States is looking to buy as opposed to what Israel has just bought.

I would rather not talk about the U.S. requirements. There are plenty of U.S. persons who can talk to that. Sure. To the Israeli part. Fair enough. Yeah, no, it just seems like it's an extraordinary collaboration. I mean, Israel and then, you know, Ukraine, these are these two laboratories.

I mean, I don't think either country really wants to be a laboratory like this. You'd rather not be. But these laboratories of 21st century warfare, and you just described a few minutes ago, this extraordinary situation where you have this science fiction laser system, which has been talked about speculatively for a century, being tested in real life on the battlefield before it's even deployed properly to operational units,

because you kind of need to, because there's so much incoming that it's, the way you told the story, it sounds like I can imagine in the sort of the American bureaucracy there being all sorts of hand-wringing and questions about whether or not we want to put this thing in before it's really tested when real lives are on the line. You're describing a situation of a kind of scarcity, maybe scarcity of interceptors. That's my speculation, not yours, where you're working this stuff out because you have to, because necessity is driving you. And it just seems important to me that, you know, not just the United States, but we have a lot

of East Asian friends that are potentially staring down the barrel of a variety of guns here in the years to come, be paying pretty close attention to what you guys are learning. I think that everybody's talking about the rapid change in technology. In the civilian market, you can see what happens with iPhones, computers, communications, AI. That same thing happens in the defense industry. Defense industry historically was very slow to adapt. Projects took a long time.

years, eight, 10, 20 years, there's no room for that anymore. Things need to be quick. And I think that during this war, the IDF, together with Rafael IAI, Elbit, changed the rules of the game. I mean, we incorporated dozens of software updates to the Iron Dome system during the war. We didn't wait to finish the war and then get an upgrade. every few weeks a new upgrade. Why? First of all, we found things that the system

did not do perfect. Second thing is the enemy came up with new threats, new tactics. And we had to answer that online, not wait and then developing. And I think that this kind of change is necessary

if militaries want to remain relevant. I think you're also seeing it in Ukraine. You're seeing it in Israel and any Western military that wants to be relevant will have to adapt quickly. What I'm told the situation in Ukraine is that your adaptation cycle, that is to say, from the moment you find something working on the battlefield to the moment where you better go find something new because the countermeasures is effectively suppressing it, is about three weeks. Yeah.

Just stunning to reflect on. I don't know about the number, but the idea is yes, this is very, very quickly. This is not something we were thinking about in the past. This is something new. And that's why I said, now we have a new technology. That's basic. Laser. Now, how do you use it?

You'll find dozens of ways to use it in the next few years. I want to ask you his last question. The system has rolled out in Israel. I mean, we're all calling it iron beam in English. And it's obviously nice sympathy with Iron Dome and everything. But I understand it's gone by the name or Aton. Yep. In Israel, can you talk a bit about that and what that means?

Well, actually, yes. Or is light. Eitan is strong, so it's strong light. The point is the reason it's called O'Eitan is that the officer that was in charge of developing the system in the last eight years, his son was killed during the war in Lebanon. It was in a special operations unit. He was killed in action, and we wanted to commemorate him. through the name of the system, so the name of the system was changed to O'Aitan,

strong light, his name was Eitan, strong. That was his private name, so that was the renaming, and his father and mother were in the delivery ceremony to the Air Force of the system. By the way, he's a very good friend of mine. Can you say more about Eitan, the young man who was killed? I leave it to his father. This is sensitive, and I would rather that. If his father wants to talk about it, it's a good.

But he was an officer in high profile, a special operations unit and the idea of very, very appreciated and loved commander. And he died fighting, protecting his soldiers and protecting the state of Israel. So very, very nice way to commemorate him. Michael Lurie, President, CEO of Rafael USA. It's been a really, really interesting conversation, and I appreciate you coming on School of Board. Thank you very much.