July 1, 2026
Navy Times looks at the ground vehicles likely to carry the U.S. military's high-energy lasers at scale, from the Army's planned hybrid ISV-H to Oshkosh's electric JLTV concept. The piece, republished from the Laser Wars newsletter, turns to Chariot Defense founder and CEO Adam Warmoth to explain the power problem at the center of the effort.
Warmoth notes that directed-energy weapons don't consume huge amounts of energy overall, but each engagement demands a large power spike sustained for several seconds. A generator built for steady output has to be sized for that peak and kept running, which he says leaves "efficiency challenges, signature management challenges and then mobility problems." The article points to a hybrid answer: a generator sized for average load, paired with a high-voltage battery that absorbs the spikes and recharges between shots.