RTX, Xcimer Team Up on Pulsed Laser Weapons for Drone and Missile Defense

RTX has teamed up with fusion-energy startup Xcimer to develop pulsed laser weapons aimed at destroying drone swarms, missiles, and other threats. According to Sina Finance, the two companies signed a research agreement worth about $50 million, and RTX is also investing in the Denver-based startup. RTX and Xcimer said they are developing a prototype pulsed ultraviolet laser system about the size of a shipping container, with the goal of completing a first demonstration within two years. RTX Chief Technology Officer Juan de Bedout called the system an "almost unlimited ammunition store," and said it is well suited to suppress large numbers of low-cost drones. Xcimer was founded in 2021 and has raised nearly $200 million, with investors including Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective. The U.S. Department of Energy has also awarded the company $9 million through a fusion technology support program. Co-founders Connor Galloway and Alexander Wallis met as undergraduates at MIT in 2004 and later studied at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where they reviewed Cold War archives and Soviet research on laser fusion. In the 1980s, U.S. Defense Department and national laboratory researchers developed high-power gas excimer lasers for missile interception under President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, known as the "Star Wars" program.