Lucene's vector search implementation has seen significant performance improvements with the integration of OpenJDK's Project Panama Vector API, which enables the reliable compilation of computations to SIMD instructions at runtime. This development addresses the limitations of previous automatic vectorization in Java, offering a notable performance boost by allowing explicit vector operations. The API supports various platforms, such as AVX instructions on x64 and NEON on AArch64, and significantly accelerates low-level primitive operations like dot product, square, and cosine distance. Benchmarks demonstrate that the new implementation, which is available on JDK 20 and the upcoming JDK 21, results in nearly eightfold faster execution compared to the older scalar implementations. Additionally, the adoption of this novel approach in Elasticsearch 8.9.0 has led to improved indexing throughput, reduced merge time, and faster query latencies, showcasing the real-world benefits of these advancements. Despite the Panama Vector API's incubating status, Lucene's adoption reflects a strategic balance between potential performance benefits and maintenance costs.