How technologies rise or fall beyond what inventors had in mind.
I have a simple rule of thumb: if anyone promises a technology in five years or more, I don’t believe a word he says (unless it’s Elon Musk, whose track record is impeccable). We have heard of potential cures to diseases or revolutions in energy, and, after years, we hear nothing again. It’s okay: one job of an entrepreneur is to be Chief Cheerleader (ChCh). When I did some tech validation work for a local venture capitalist, my job was to ignore everything they told us and look at patents, markets, technology, and competitors to figure out if my boss should invest in the company or not. He eventually let me go as I couldn’t give a thumbs-up on the companies I saw. To date, he’s never had an exit from any of his investments.
One of the promises during the recent fighting in Israel was a laser-based interceptor system. Rafael, one of the big Israeli defense contractors, promised “Iron Beam,” which was supposed to allow for interceptions for a few dollars of electricity in place of $50,000 Iron Dome missiles. There were scattered reports of the laser system being activated on the Hezbollah front, but there was no real confirmation as to its performance. And then very recently, it was announced that Iron Dome has been upgraded, and voila, now includes the Iron Beam as an integral part of the Iron Dome system. Maybe the laser helps in guidance or speeds up target destruction. I don’t have too much data right now, but clearly Iron Beam was initially pulled out of the oven before it was fully baked. And this is no surprise.
One can go back to the history of submarine warfare during World War II and learn a great deal. While the Japanese had particularly good torpedoes, early American versions tended to hit a target and not explode. Daring captains and crews risked their lives to approach high-value ships only to hear “thud” as metal hit metal and there was no boom. The Navy did not believe the complaints but eventually came around to accept that there was a problem and fixed it. Once U.S. subs had reliable torpedoes, they went to town on Japanese shipping—both commercial and military. By the end of the war, they effectively ran out of meaningful targets.
Let’s imagine that we’re all sitting in my VC’s office and the Iron Beam guys come in to raise money. They tell us of all of the advantages of using a quick burst of high-intensity light over a physical interceptor missile. We can all buy that part of their pitch. After they close their presentation, it’s time to ask questions. I know from watching too many military videos that anti-missile lasers are not new. They essentially came into the human consciousness with Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program that was to use satellite-based lasers to shoot down Soviet nuclear ballistic missiles heading to the U.S. Already in the 1980s, people raised technical questions: The first was energy. How can you get enough energy to charge the laser, fire, and reload for the next shot? What if the Soviets sent up lots of decoys? How will you hit the right warheads?
Now, let’s get back to our meeting. We’ll ignore patents and also the market: when a military needs something, cost and number of customers become secondary to the technology being available and reliable. So, let’s ask some questions:
- How much energy is required to shoot down a target drone or rocket? How long would the beam have to engage its target in order to render it ineffective?
- How quickly could the system recharge itself for its next shot?
- What is the effect of clouds or smoke on the beam hitting and destroying a target?
From promo videos that I saw, I already knew that the highly-touted system was in trouble. It takes at least a few seconds or more to disable an incoming projectile. Before Hezbollah was pushed off the Israeli border, time from launch to impact was around 15 seconds. Today, it's 30 seconds. Also, if the system was truly successful, terrorists would simply put a much thicker underside or maybe a mirror in order to weaken the effect of the laser on a target. An exploding Iron Dome missile either destroys its target or doesn’t. Iron Beam may succeed in staying engaged with a drone or missile, but its laser may simply require too much time and thus render it ineffective on the battlefield.
Various armed forces have been playing around with lasers for decades. The USAF has had a dedicated flying test-bed for a laser-based weapon for years. The Russians actually temporarily blinded American pilots with a military laser that they too were testing back in 1987. Lasers are definitely cool, but if one can get around them by minor modifications, then they will be limited in their effectiveness. The code breakers at Bletchley Park were temporarily stymied when U-boat boss Admiral Karl Doenitz added a fourth rotor to his Enigma Machines and made all of their previous efforts obsolete. That is the tit for tat of military technology. Hezbollah started using fiber-optic drones, so Israel started to cover their installations and vehicles with fishnet to catch the drones before their explosive warheads detonate. If Iron Beam had been successful, drone modifications would have been initiated to make its impact less meaningful. A good mirror on the bottom of a drone or a thicker body around the critical components might do the trick. The loud announcements of Iron Beam not accompanied by actual battlefield data are typical for technologies that are not fully ready for prime time.
The demo video for Iron Dome + Iron Beam seemed to show the system firing multiple missiles in rapid succession. Between the 2025 and 2026 Iran Wars, Israel started to use Iron Dome for dealing with remnants of ballistic missiles. The video showing multiple rapid launches might be a further refinement of the system to destroy remnants of missiles that have been partially destroyed by Arrow or other anti-ballistic missile systems. When the U-boats seemed poised to choke Britain into submission, several key inventions turned the tide of the war. Besides code-breaking, “Hedgehog” mortars allowed escort destroyers to fire at approaching submarines without having to pass over and then release depth charges. The British also developed Huff-Duff for detecting U-boat communications that led them directly to their targets. Leigh Lights on B-24 Liberators lit up the oceans and allowed for identification of U-boats on the surface for battery charging or fueling. The tide of the Atlantic war turned and allowed for the preparations of the Normandy Landings and the final victory over Nazi Germany.
So if you hear about a future technology, don’t write it off but be skeptical. There are charlatans, but there are also dedicated inventors and scientists who refuse to believe that their technology will not work. The inventor of PCR claimed that it was not the right thing for COVID because if one runs enough cycles, he could find anything he wanted. I knew someone who was kept at home for six weeks because tests kept detecting RNA well after the infection was under control. We are fortunate to live in an age of incredible technology and possibility. Some things, like Viagra, are meant for one use (cardiovascular) and end up being used somewhere else. Inventors and investors need to be nimble in understanding their technologies, limits, markets, people’s needs and interests, competition, and price points. Mercedes lost over $4 billion on its Smart Car: there was a huge market for a tiny city car but not one at Mercedes' high price point.
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