The government acceptance testing at Yuma Proving Ground covered performance, mobility, safety, and lethality [5]. Lethality is the one that gets filmed. Mobility and safety are the two that decide whether a platoon can actually operate the thing, and they are the two a range demo can skip. A laser that burns a quadcopter with the truck parked and the range cleared is a physics result, but a laser that gets driven, then handed to Army units at Fort Sill for new equipment training, becomes a piece of equipment somebody has to sign for [6].
Now look at how the capability is split. Increment one is the effector on a light truck: two 20kW-class LOCUST systems from AeroVironment on the General Motors Defense Infantry Squad Vehicle, delivered to the Army's Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office [1][2][3]. Increment two, which AeroVironment says arrives next month, is the same 20kW-class laser on two Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, this time with radar and command-and-control [9]. Add them and RCCTO holds four vehicles when both increments land [11]. As the release describes them, the first pair carries the beam and the second pair carries the sensing and the cueing [12].
That distinction is the whole comparison against kinetic interceptors. The pitch is cost per shot, effector against effector. The thing being done is a vehicle, a radar, a C2 link, and a crew roster. If your two lasers depend on somebody else's air picture, the honest line item includes the laser plus whatever you had to borrow to point it. Increment two is where that stops being borrowed [9].
AeroVironment's Mary Clum describes LOCUST as extensively validated with demonstrated reliability and operational readiness for the counter-UAS fight [7], and John Garrity says the company stands ready for full-scale manufacturing across mobile and fixed-site platforms [8]. Two accepted prototypes and one training event is enough evidence to write tactics against, though establishing an availability rate, a mean time between failures on a moving vehicle, or a number of engagements per maintenance cycle will take more data than that, and those are the figures a program office will be asked for. The release says soldier feedback from Fort Sill is shaping ongoing enhancements, without saying which ones [6].
Here is the two-question grid I would put any C-UAS candidate through, now that this delivery makes both questions answerable. First: does the effector arrive with its own sensor and command-and-control, or does it borrow them from a system you have not budgeted? Second: has the government tested it moving, or only firing? Increment one, tested for mobility [5], is described as the laser on a truck [12], while increment two, as described, already includes the sensing and cueing [9]. Anything a vendor brings you that fails both questions is a demo with a delivery schedule attached, and the useful thing about AMP-HEL is that it now sets the bar the demo has to clear.
