US Missile Defense Agency is Requesting Money to Place a Particle Beam Weapon in Orbit

he Missile Defense Agency has offered new details about plans to develop a science fiction-sounding space-based neutral particle beam weapon to disable or destroy incoming ballistic missiles. The goal is to have a prototype system ready for a test in orbit by 2023, an ambitious schedule to demonstrate that the technology has progressed to a more useful state from when the U.S. military last explored and then abandoned the concept nearly three decades ago.

The U.S. military’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2020 asks for $34 million in funding for the neutral particle beam program, or NPB, according to documents released on Mar. 18, 2019. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) wants a total of $380 million through 2023 fiscal cycle for development of the directed energy weapon. Defense One, citing unnamed U.S. officials, had been first to report the existence of the plan on Mar. 14, 2019. It’s also worth noting that Congress set out a goal of testing of at least one space-based missile defense system prototype by 2022 and the deployment of “an operational capability at the earliest practicable date” in the annual defense policy bill for the 2018 Fiscal Year.

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