“This is my goal: If it’s in line of sight of a ship, the first solution that we’re using is directed energy.” The following line by Adm. Daryl Caudle explains the importance of the recent laser shoot by USS Preble as an issue of engineering significance to engineers rather than to the consumers of headlines. It is not interesting in itself when a beam, which has power of 60 kilowatts, is to attack small uncrewed aircraft. It is the useful signal that can be made possible when a directed-energy weapon ceases being a bolt-on experiment and begins acting like a native part of the ship.
An at-sea counter-UAS demonstration was done using Preble with High-Energy Laser with Built-In Optical Dazzler and Surveillance better known as Mk 5 Mod 0 HELIOS to shoot down four drones. That is a relatively small number, and it is operationally readable: follow a target, pass it to a weapon, apply effects, etc. It is also a challenge of crew operations, safety limit, and the non-glamorous nature of maintaining optics and cooling in a salt-soaked and moving platform.
The difference between HELIOS and previous shipboard laser deployments is the area of integration. Rather than operating as a separate device, HELIOS is intended to connect as part of the Aegis Combat System, and so the system can share the same detection-to-engagement cycle already occupied by guns and missiles. That is important since the most difficult issue to solve on the ship is not often, can it make a beam? Whether sensors, fire control and human decision making can provide repeatable weapon grades aim points within seconds and minutes that can be useful in responding to small targets that arrive unexpectedly in numbers.
The magazine depth is the draw, which is not metaphorical. Traditional close-in defense expends material inventory: missiles, rounds and special interceptors. A laser alters the accounting towards electrical generation and thermal management. The ship can continue to take shots without necessarily having to be replenished at the sea, in case it has power and can dispose its heat. HELIOS also offers two levers, one hard-kill mode, which heats the structure until it fails, and the other optical “dazzle” mode, which is expected to disrupt sensors instead of burning airframes.
There come with that advantage limitations which bundle no passion can wash away. Lasers are line of sight weapons and air is not a hollow pipe, turbulence and moisture bend and take away energy downrange, sea spray and salt attack bare surfaces. One emitter should linger on a target so as to cause damage and then move on to the next. Where there is danger of saturation, that dwell time is a scheduling issue, rather than a physics issue.
Even the most mundane limiter is the scale governing one: electrical power. The new-build Flight III Arleigh Burke destroyers even with heavy loads are, in part, due to the AN/SPY-6 radar requiring generation margin. Integration trade was defined by Rear Adm. Ronald Boxall in a rather succinct way: “The Navy will have to either remove something or look at ‘very aggressive power management.’” This is the actual delimiting line between the contemporary 60 kW shipboard laser and the interest of the Navy in systems of 300+ kW to attack harder targets.
These ambitions of higher power are being informed by test programs and technology maturation activities across the fleet. The larger directed-energy pipeline of the Navy is the High Energy Laser Counter Anti-Ship Cruise Missile Project which seeks to deploy a 300+ kilowatt laser platform with scaled designs. Meanwhile, the next-generation concept of DDG(X) is tilted towards greater margins of space, weight, power, and cooling “SWAP-C” with a specific purpose of accommodating future sensors and directed-energy weapons without making every upgrade a zero-sum game.
Preble does not shoot the four drones instead of missiles, and makes lasers the new SOPA answer to all incoming. It does better still: it demonstrates what directed energy would appear like once it is integrated into the combat system of the ship, it Highlights the engineering bottleneck that would see lasers remain a niche layer or become a standard loadout-how much power a warship can produce, transfer, and take as well.
