Defense contractor RTX has teamed up with fusion energy startup Xcimer to revisit a Cold War-era technological concept. Xcimer Energy, founded in 2021 and headquartered in Denver, is partnering with RTX to develop pulsed laser weapons designed to destroy drone swarms and missiles. For years, nuclear fusion has been viewed as a distant dream for clean energy, but now this technology is poised to take on an entirely new role in modern warfare.

Fusion energy startup Xcimer Energy is joining forces with aerospace and defense firm RTX to build pulsed laser weapons capable of intercepting drone swarms, missiles, and other threats. The two parties have signed a development agreement worth approximately $50 million, with RTX also making an investment in the Denver-based startup. Xcimer is working on a gas laser fusion system, with many of its design concepts tracing back to Cold War-era technology programs. This collaboration aims to combine the latest advances in laser fusion with real-world operational needs: finding a more cost-effective means of interception. On the battlefields of Ukraine and the Middle East, cheap drones have become a core class of combat weaponry.

Project details

RTX and Xcimer say they are developing a pulsed ultraviolet laser system prototype, roughly the size of a shipping container, with mobile deployment capability, targeting the first demonstration within two years. This Xcimer laser system runs on electricity, a feature that RTX Chief Technology Officer Juan de Bedoya describes as "a nearly unlimited ammunition magazine." De Bedoya added: "This system is highly suited to suppressing the large numbers of low-cost drones that are emerging."

Xcimer was founded in 2021 and has raised nearly $200 million to date, with backers including Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Lauren Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective. The U.S. Department of Energy has also awarded the company $9 million through its fusion technology support program. Co-founders Connor Galloway and Alexander Valys became roommates as undergraduates at MIT in 2004; they later pursued graduate studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where they pored over Cold War archives and Soviet research literature on laser fusion.

In the 1980s, researchers at the U.S. Department of Defense and national laboratories developed high-power gas excimer lasers for missile interception, serving President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly known as "Star Wars." After the end of the Cold War, interest in the technology waned and funding was cut, with the program terminated in the early 1990s. Excimer lasers are now used in semiconductor manufacturing, but U.S. government research into laser fusion for energy and nuclear stockpile stewardship shifted to glass lasers instead. Around 2020, as industry interest in the technology grew and electricity demand rose, Galloway and Valys revived this technical approach. Valys, who serves as president and chief technology officer, said: "We found that no one was really advancing this fusion technology path that we believed was viable, and that's why Xcimer was created."

Industry background

Nuclear fusion is the source of the sun's energy and has long been regarded as the ultimate clean energy solution: it promises nearly limitless electricity without generating greenhouse gases or radioactive waste. Following the breakthrough at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2022, which achieved a fusion experiment where output energy exceeded input energy, market enthusiasm for fusion technology has continued to climb. Xcimer's fusion approach builds on the national laboratory's research findings while striving to lower costs. Instead of using expensive, easily damaged specialty glass as the optical medium, it employs excimer lasers filled with a gas mixture. Xcimer has built what it claims is the world's largest privately owned laser facility in Denver.

Galloway, the company's CEO and chief science officer, says the weapon development program with RTX will complement Xcimer's long-term goal of building a commercial fusion power plant by 2035, while also generating near-term revenue for the company - something most fusion energy firms lack. Galloway revealed that the two companies have been in discussions for about a year. "We ultimately settled on a collaboration model: we build the laser system and light source, integrating with RTX's technology." De Bedoya said RTX will handle targeting, tracking, and the overall command-and-control systems.