We do have the company's Chief Executive Officer, Scott Keeney, here to take us through the story. Scott, thank you for joining us, and I'll turn it over to you.
Thanks, Brian. I apologize for the AV problems there, but we make great lasers, so stand by. I want to just tell you a little bit about who we are. We focus on high-power lasers, and there are three main areas we'll talk about today: directed energy, sensing, and additive manufacturing. We lead the world in the core technology we have, and I'll talk through that. I'll also talk about each of these application areas in turn. Start with just the first picture here of the product we're just releasing right now, which is our high-power beam director. This was on the Army Stryker vehicle later this year, and we're really excited about this.
This is one example of the work we're doing in high-power lasers. This laser is about a 50 K-W laser. This is the image of what the guts of the laser looks like. We go up to 300 K-W. We are the leader in the world, have the highest power laser in the world, and they're deployed. They're being worked on for a number of different applications. The reason we're able to get that performance is because of the stack of technology that we've developed over the last 25 years, starting from the left, the semiconductor laser, going all the way through to that laser directed energy system. I'll start with just a little bit of history here.
The foundation of what we started with 25 years ago was this semiconductor laser. It remains a critical part of this technology stack. Just so you get a sense of what we do, we start with gallium arsenide wafers, and these produce these high-power semiconductor chips. These are on the order of about 5 mm , and they produce tens of watts of power that get then placed on these submounts here. We have proprietary technology in terms of that structure of the chip, the passivation of it, a number of other things. Indeed, we've modified what we're doing to optimize it for directed energy in addition to other markets.
That chip then gets packaged into this fiber-coupled assembly. Multiple different chips come together to stuff that light into that fiber. When we started the company 25 years ago, that was our vision to cram more photons into that small space. We had five data points to extrapolate our vision. I think Gordon Moore had four that he used, so we're a good company. The vision was that we'd be able to drive that further. We're about 10 watts when we started the company, and we've driven that to our latest record, which is a K-W of power just last month. This is the foundational technology which drives everything we do, and we started that 25 years ago.
In addition to that, performance in terms of power, which is applicable to both defense and the industrial markets, we've also developed critical technology for defense, literally from the foundation of the company. One way to look at that is with respect to weight. It turns out for an industrial laser, weight and size don't matter terribly, but for defense applications, they do. We've got the leading technology also that drives that size and weight down too.
The priorities that drive us with respect to defense are well documented in the last administration in this 2023 technology summary and more recently in the executive order, which is now formally called Golden Dome. These documents describe three areas of priority, and we're critical for each of them. What I want to do today is just talk through what we're doing in each of these areas. I'll start with directed energy, and I'll start with the destroyer DDG. In the Red Sea, there are two key issues that the Navy faces, two gaps or problems that lasers can address. One is economics. Today, our Navy is using relatively expensive missiles to address drones.
The drone maybe costs $20,000. The engagement cost for us can be north of $1 million, as much as $2 million each time. The economics, there's an asymmetry there. Second is the logistics of the magazine. With kinetic weapon system, you only have a certain depth of that magazine. Lasers address both of those challenges. High-power lasers will degrade, destroy targets, and as long as you have that energy, you have the lasers, you have a much deeper magazine, and the cost is associated with whatever that energy cost is. Much lower cost.
There is this pressing need that is very clear here in the Red Sea sort of case study, but in others also. In addition to that, the reason that directed energy is a very important application today, opportunity for us, is one, the need has increased with the proliferation of threats such as drones. Second, because the technology has reached a place where it enables this laser-directed d energy application. If you look at industrial lasers, typically you need up to say about a few kilowatts of power, single-mode laser power. For directed energy, though, you need to start really above that and go well above that to be really relevant. It is only fairly recently that this is the record power in history.
By the way, we have the leading power today. We have only recently crossed that threshold. Today we have got increasing threats and technology that has reached a point where it is practical to use. The sort of threats that we are talking about here are broken into three sort of segments, if you will. Low power, sort of smaller drones, medium power, sort of more proficient drones, sort of what they are called Group 3 UAS, and then finally more advanced threats. Just to give you a feel for what's going on in each of these three areas, at the low power level, there are many systems out there.
I'd highlight one from a customer in France that deployed their lasers to defend crowds at the Paris Olympics. There are examples today of lasers that are being used for low power sort of applications. Second, for medium power, the Army in 2024 deployed their first prototype units to the field, and it was a key milestone. We'll be delivering the next generation later this year at the medium power level. Finally, at the higher power level, probably you've all read about Iron Beam in Israel. Again, 2024 was a milestone year with a number of announcements there. We're seeing applications in all of these areas, and I think 2024 was a really important year.
Just to conclude in directed energy, to come back to some specifics in this technology stack, we have leading technology at each of these stages of this stack. I showed you the chip, the fiber coupling. At the next level, those fiber-coupled semiconductor lasers get coupled into this fiber amplifier. Those boxes, if you will, get coupled into that next big box, the beam combination, and that gets assembled into the directed energy laser weapon. We have key differentiators across this.
I think in addition to that, it's important to note that it's actually the integration across this stack of technology, which is really important, the sort of systems engineering that goes into optimizing what we're doing. Coming to the next area in sensing, in directed energy, we use lasers to transfer energy to degrade, damage, destroy something. In sensing, we're using lasers, usually pulsed lasers, to detect to provide information about something. There's a wide range of applications here. This is a market, application area that we've been in for decades in some cases. We have long-standing programs record, and we have new development programs here.
It is a very important application area. It is a little broader than directed energy. I'll just give you a few examples of what's going on in this space. First, LiDAR is an example where lasers can supplement radar systems, provide higher precision images that are very important for ISR, a wide range of applications here to just provide that awareness and understanding of what's going on. Next is an example of target detection. Again, we're using lasers to provide much higher precision here. A lot of these just, so you know, I can't talk a whole lot about this, so I'm giving you illustrative examples here. Next is in navigation.
We provide lasers that provide inertial navigation systems, really important for a wide range of different programs. We also provide lasers for something called countermeasures. This is a laser that on this Chinook helicopter will confuse the guidance system of a heat-seeking missile that is a threat, and it has been successfully deployed now for a better part of 20 years. In space, a couple of examples. One example of range finding, there is a wide range of range finding examples. This NASA satellite is one of our lasers that was space qualified and has been very successful. Finally, space communications is another area that we see growing opportunities.
There is a wide range of different applications that we put in the sensing category, and many are mission critical. The final area is in hypersonics. Here the application for lasers is notably in additive manufacturing. The scramjet example here is one example. You simply can't make these devices. You can't optimize them without the use of laser additive manufacturing, 3D printing metal parts. Another good example is the SpaceX rocket engines. Incredible progress made here, both reducing weight, improving performance, cost, huge benefits here that have been instrumental in helping drive down the cost, the launch cost.
It is just extraordinary to see the dramatic improvements here due to this and other technologies. Indeed, if you overlay the improvements we've made in additive manufacturing here, this is one of the reasons we're driving it, as the cost of building these additive-manufactured d parts has come down. We see that as one of the markets that is poised to grow as we continue to drive this down. Just to give you a feel here, what we're doing, we have proprietary technology that allows us to adjust our beam when you're making these parts. The very fine lattice part on the left, you want to use this very fine single-mode beam to make that part.
On the right, where you don't have that fine lattice, you can use a bigger beam. You'll go a lot faster. Turns out most parts are served in between, and our laser switches in milliseconds to go back and forth. We can improve the productivity of these tools significantly. There is a wide range of parts that are being built that you simply can't make any other way. It is one of the applications that we put into our commercial side of the business. It is one that we do see growth. There are others, and there are some that we are looking at in an opportunistic way.
The growth that we see going forward, as Brian mentioned, is largely in defense. If you look at where we were when we went in 2018, we were over 80% commercial, less than 20% defense. As we look ahead, it is really defense where we see the significant growth going forward. In addition to this, I do want to just describe a little bit of the history since going public. I think one of the big headwinds that we faced was China. I think nLIGHT is one of the companies that has pursued a de-risking strategy.
We intentionally decided to focus on the rest of the world in defense after we went public. Literally, the month that we went public is the month that Xi Jinping took over power for life, and we made a decision that we were going to place our bets elsewhere. You can see what we've done in terms of revenue. We've defocused there. We've grown in defense, and we've replaced much of that business. In addition to that, we've de-risked the supply chain. We have moved our manufacturing out of China, and we've moved other supply chains out of China. It has been very challenging.
De-risking, people talk about it like somehow it's straightforward. It's not. It's a very, very difficult thing to do. Proud that we have done that, and it sets the stage for us, especially with our focus on defense applications. That's where we see the growth going forward in the defense applications. In the last earnings call, I did note that we are forecasting 25% growth in defense. It's roughly for the year, it was 53% of our revenue. In the final quarter, it was about 64%. We are seeing that grow. We do see continued growth there. That growth is supported by our backlog. We have on the order of $400 million of backlog today. $167 million is funded backlog.
That grew over 55% over the last year. We are seeing increasing backlog that's funded, and that's over the next couple of years. Unfunded are programs we are working on that are very solid opportunities. On top of that, we have a funnel that goes beyond this to further support our growth. In sum, we are positioned to lead in this market for these critical defense applications. As we grow, we have put in place the infrastructure that we can leverage and support increasing profitability as we continue to grow. With that, Brian, hand it over.
That sounds great. Scott, maybe just a couple of questions while we're here. Then we're going to adjourn to the breakout room. Could you maybe just give us a little bit of a sense of how you expect the timing of these various markets in your defense ecosystem that you laid out, how you expect them to kind of evolve over the next few years?
Good. In defense, there are these two fundamental categorie: directed energy and sensing. In sensing, we have long-standing programs that will continue, and we're seeing growth in those programs. There also, we see new programs that are going through the low-rate initial production today. We see those in the coming quarters. We see improvement, and certainly over the next few years, we see new programs in sensing. Similarly, in directed energy, we have many of the key programs, not only in the US, but also internationally. As I said, I think 2024 was a really important milestone year where we saw some of the first real deployments of lasers.
It will take time for all the con ops to be developed, all of the details to be developed and implemented by whether it be the Army or the Navy or internationally, but we see that occurring today.
That's great. I think you've given us a lot of really good information to kind of noodle on here. I think we'll take the rest of the questions in the breakout session downstairs, and we'll move from there.
Good.
Great. Thank you so much, Scott.
Thank you, everyone, for your time.