This is my objective, provided it can be seen by a ship, the initial solution which we are presently considering is directed energy. The purpose described by Adm. Daryl Caudle is the reason why the most current at-sea effort of USS Preble is of interest to anyone following the attempts of warships today to defend themselves against small, cheap and fast-closing uncrewed threats.
An Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, Preble, now is bound-up with a multi-target directed-energy event: its High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system has demonstrated in a Navy-operated demonstration out on the sea that it can disable four drones in a demonstration. Target profiles and a working time of engagement have not been disclosed by the Navy, but little more than passing a single target is significant progress to shipboard lasers, where repeatability of performance has been historically the most difficult gate to pass.
Since 2022, Preble has a 60-kilowatt-class laser (HELIOS also referred to as Mk 5 Mod 0). The difference between it and previous “bolt-on” tests is not only power, but the way it is made to integrate into the ship. HELIOS was to be installed on the Aegis decision loop-detect, track, assign, engage to allow the laser to be considered as an additional selectable effector to guns and missiles. It is that integration that makes the difference between a laser as a science project and a laser as a useful element of fleet air defence.
It is the magnetism of magazines. Guns and missiles have limits; a ship having used the ready store can not merely be replenished in the sea. A laser switches the calculation to convert fuel and electrical generation into more engagements to maintain high-end interceptors to be used in cases where they are actually required. According to the Congressional Research Service, the marginal cost estimated is roughly 1-10 dollars per shot, which can also be shrunk to a shorthand to justify why directed energy continues to revert to the surface-warfare roadmap.
With that being said, the trap that is concealed within the infinity magazine slogan is also highlighted by the four drone incident involving Preble.
Laser weapons are still field-of-view weapons, which are burdened by ocean and air. The beam energy decays with range and the absorption and scattering accumulate and turbulence may bend out the spot. Marine environments also have their own punishments: the air is damp and salty, and propagation is made difficult, and the optics must be resistant to constant exposure. The practical limit of only one laser interacting with a target at a time and the requirement of sufficient dwell time on an object to cause disabling effects to avoid quickly moving onto the next object puts on a hard limit how much one emitter can do to cause the saturation of a target object in reality.
However, the ultimate limiter is the one that the designers of the ship cannot hand-wave away and that is power and cooling. Flight III Burkes already possess heavy electrical loads, and even in earlier flights even the Navy has recognized painful trade space in the addition of high demand systems. Rear Adm. Ronald Boxall explained the reality very succinctly when he warned that to add capability the Navy might need to take away something or seek to manage power in a very aggressive manner. The problem is further enhanced by the fact that the service is discussing extending beyond the current 60-kW category to the 150-kW developmental path and, even beyond that, the 300-600 kW category that it is discussing in future surface combatants.
In that regard, HELIOS is read more like an addition to the existing point-defense layers rather than their replacement. The demonstration of Preble suggests that a contemporary destroyer could repeat several times the operation of a combat-system-integrated laser in an aerial target array at sea, more than once, and it did not seem to it a one-shot stunt. Hard engineering work has now taken the place of the glamour, producing and transporting electricity, rejection of heat, and a maintenance of accuracy in optics, long enough to ensure that a laser makes it through the list to be a standard shipboard option and not a special performance that must be highly staged.
