The Royal Navy, like its US Navy counterpart, views directed energy weapons as the likely answer to many developing manned and unmanned threats.
In May 2023, the US Navy (USN) released a screenshot of what it stated were Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy fast-attack craft swarming a Panama-flagged oil tanker, Niovi, as the tanker transited the Straits of Hormuz in the Gulf. The screenshot was taken from video footage of an incident reported to have occurred on 3 May.
The significant nature of the threat posed by manned and, increasingly, unmanned surface vessels and air vehicles conducting swarming operations is demonstrated by the fact that Western navies are exploring a range of different remotely operated technologies that can be used to destroy such systems on the surface of the sea or in the air, including when they are massed. These technologies include: remote weapons stations, which are a long-standing capability found onboard naval ships; and directed energy weapons (DEWs), which are an emerging capability for several Western navies.
In a parallel emerging technology development, artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are being introduced to support the targeting element of DEW when tackling small, agile targets like unmanned systems operating in swarms.
The USN has for some time been developing the capacity to deploy DEW capability. As far back as 2014, it was trialling a laser weapons system (LaWS) – the AN/SEQ-3 XN-1 – onboard the amphibious platform USS Ponce.
The USN’s high-end naval capability rivals, namely the Russian Federation Navy and China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), have also been developing DEW capability, also in the form of lasers. In Congressional testimony, senior US military officials have underscored the development progress Russia is making in DEW areas like LaWS.
Royal Navy Seek DEWs Too
The UK Royal Navy (RN) a has long-standing presence in key strategic regions such as the Persian Gulf, and as such will be keenly aware of the threat posed by manned and unmanned systems conducting swarm tactics, particularly in such enclosed maritime areas. The RN, and the UK armed forces as a whole, are also increasingly focused on the development of DEWs such as LaWS capabilities to counter these tactics. This focus was set out in the 2021 iteration of the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD’s) Defence Command Paper (DCP). Through the DCP process, the MoD sets out its capability development plan to deliver on the strategic intent defined in the ‘Integrated Review’, the UK’s cross-government assessment of defence, foreign, and security policy requirements that is produced in tandem with the DCP.
In the 2021 DCP, the MoD stated its intent to “invest in next-generation capabilities”, including DEWs. The DCP defined DEW capability as the use of lasers, microwaves, or particle beams to generate “highly focused energy aimed at damaging a target”.
In the latest version of the DCP, published in July 2023, the MoD noted that LaWS were a ‘game-changing’ technology that the UK’s defence science and technology research and development (R&D) community was trialling. The MoD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) has been working with a group of industry partners known as the Dragonfire consortium to develop and demonstrate what the DCP referred to as a “working prototype laser system”, in testing activities against an unmanned air system (UAS). “They integrated a trial weapon system with advanced command and control, able to generate 50kW of power in a laser, and target it with ultra-precise accuracy and stability,” the report noted. The test-firings included, in a November 2022 trial, a direct hit against a tethered UAS target over 2 miles (3.5 kilometres) away. “When further developed and deployed, this system will give the UK armed forces the capability to neutralise targets without the need for ammunition,” the report added.
The testing of the capability against a UAS underlined a key operator requirement for the UK in terms of the application of laser-based DEW technology. In the DCP, the MoD noted that “directed energy weapons such as high-power lasers will form the basis of capabilities that deliver protection against new threats like drone swarms.”
Indeed, within its broad focus on harnessing advanced technology to enhance UK armed forces capabilities, the DCP noted that DEWs were amongst a select number of core new technologies that “will be critical to the delivery of military capability and national security tasks”. The report noted that the operational and strategic significance of advanced technologies like DEWs had been borne out in MoD analysis, wargaming, and horizon-scanning to the point that the MoD now sees the need to create developmental headroom in its programme planning to prioritise innovative technologies that can counter emerging threats such as unmanned systems.
Capability Development
Broadly, current DEW capability developments consist of focus on two core concepts, which deliver effect in two primary, and very different, ways.
First, using high-power radio frequency (RF)-based microwaves, a broad beam of energy can be fired out from a large transmitter with the aim of disrupting the electronics in the target object, such as a vehicle with complex electronics. RF-based effects are used more in the land domain, or the littoral environment, as they project effect over shorter range.
Second, high-power lasers – between, for example, 50kW and 150kW – are used to produce a pinpoint, high-energy beam to burn a hole in a vehicle, to destroy its electronics and/or flight surfaces. The high-power generation and the range this brings generally has greater relevance in the naval environment.
For LaWS, generating significant and enduring power with no need for a weapons magazine, and supported by significant accuracy and stability in the firing platforms, are the core capability elements. The combination of these elements – the power of the output, and the stability of the platform – is crucial to delivering effect.
The equivalent might be trying to burn a hole in a piece of paper using a magnifying glass, Dr Mark Byfield, vice president for Strategic Business Development at UK company Chess Dynamics, told Armada International, during an interview at the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) 2023 exhibition, which took place in London in September. “If you haven’t got it focused, if you’re moving it around, you’re never going to burn it,” Byfield explained.
In this context, targeting a small, fast-moving vehicle like a UAS or an unmanned surface vessel (USV) with a LaWS can be challenging, added Byfield.
“Marrying up the requirement to point that laser very accurately and move it, following a moving target – whether that be an unmanned system, surface ship, jet ski, rigid-hull inflatable boat, or helicopter, whatever that target is, surface or air – you need to have a system that is able to move a large laser very accurately, keeping it pointed, so that when the commander decides to activate and engage the laser, you’ve got your pinpoint laser spot held on that target, ideally in the same place on the target,” Byfield explained. “To have the laser cause the effect – which is often to burn out electronics, or to burn a hole in the flight surfaces, so the vehicle crashes into the ocean – you’re going to diffuse the energy if you’re moving it around the target,” he added. “The lasers give you range and a pinpoint dot on the target.”
Chess designs precision positioners that move LaWS beam directors accurately in the three-dimensional space, in order to point the laser in tracking and targeting objects. The company works closely with the UK’s key DEW system designers, including Thales and MBDA, who are developing the high-power laser technologies. Chess’s beam director product is an electro-optical/infra-red (EO/IR) system derived from its family of Sea Eagle EO/IR capabilities. The beam director is enabled by high-definition IR and TV cameras, as well as a laser range finder. The beam director is integrated – and bore-sighted – with the laser. Onboard ship, it can be situated onto a deck or mast structure.
“In effect, when the operator is looking at a picture of the outside world – whether it’s open sea, open sky, or sea with a target object in it like a ship, unmanned system, helicopter, or other – the system integrity has got to be such that what the operator is looking at is exactly where the laser is pointing,” said Byfield.
“The electro-mechanical design of the beam director is critical, because it’s got to move reliably, smoothly, in high precision, and point accurately in every direction around a 360-degree azimuth and in every elevation from 0 to 90 degrees upwards,” Byfield added.
Chess has been working in this area for several years, developing concepts relating to naval laser directed energy weapons (Naval L-DEW) and looking at how to optimise these concepts to overcome some of the technical and engineering challenges, as part of the process of building a baseline upon which to engineer production-standard systems. “The goal is to move away from capability demonstrations and analysis modelling to real, field-able production systems,” Byfield explained.
As regards the technical and engineering challenges a company or an operator might face in building or using, respectively, a Naval L-DEW system, Byfield highlighted some key areas of focus.
First is the requirement to keep the laser locked onto target, even if the target is a UAS moving with speed and agility. This feeds into the need to keep the laser locked onto the same place on the target. So doing requires precision tracking, target identification, and ensuring sensors and lasers are perfectly sighted together to keep the laser lined up with the camera.
Second, he said, “In the design phase, handling a high-energy laser in the sense of engineering a system that is going to successfully, safely … utilise that laser is quite a challenge.” “There’s a lot of energy packed into the system, so any optical path must be dust-free, and perfectly optically formed or produced. You can’t have any glitches or any defects in the system,” he added.
For Chess, there is a need to ensure in the technology a safe, reliable, and stable route for the laser through the beam director. This means assembling the beam director – and especially the electro-optical/electro-mechanical head – in a clean, dust-free environment.
“It’s about having a very rugged, reliable design that the high-power energy moves through,” said Byfield. “We’re effectively routing it round in different directions – different bearings, different elevations – so we’ve got to be sure that the moving parts of our system don’t in any way compromise that high-energy laser as it routes through the system.”
Naval L-DEW systems use a large amount of energy, so “[the beam director] has got to be precision engineered and tested very thoroughly at various stages before it is all integrated into the final system,” he said.
Third, there is a lot of ancillary equipment used to control the laser power supply, for example to help beam-forming, that again must be accurately produced.
Power Generation
Power supply – power generation and management – is something of a standalone technological challenge. For L-DEW capabilities, this would be expected.
There are two related aspects here, Byfield explained. First, he said, “You have to make sure you’ve got enough of a power bank to deliver your mission.” This is a key design challenge for the shipbuilding primes and those companies providing any Naval L-DEW capability onboard.
Second, Byfield continued, “One of the panaceas of Naval L-DEW is the so-called ‘magazine-less’ idea, in that that you don’t have to load up with bullets, shells, or rockets, so you can keep firing.” This raises a technical challenge, however. “Do we have to be cognisant that there will be some form of duty cycle on the laser?” Byfield asked. “If you fire a very-high energy laser constantly for long periods of time, you’ve got a lot of heat to worry about and dissipate. So, there will be in all probability duty cycle applications to be taken into account.”
Certainly, all aspects of power generation and management will be something the UK MoD is assessing as it looks to evolve Naval L-DEW systems from technology demonstrators into real, fielded systems.
Capability Requirement
This is being borne out in the latest UK DEW R&D proposal. Currently, the UK MoD is looking at three DEW-based capability concept demonstrators: a land-based high-power RF DEW; a land-based L-DEW; and a Naval L-DEW.
In early September 2023, the MoD’s Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) organisation issued what is known as a ‘prior information notice’, which was effectively a call for industry ideas on L-DEW broadly, and specifically on Naval L-DEW.
Under the headline ‘Making Science Fiction a Reality’, the notice announced that – within what it referred to as an ‘Innovation Focus Area’ – the UK “is seeking proposals that present ideas to contribute to the first generation of deployed DEWs”. Such proposals, it explained, should focus on: laser and RF Source technologies; beam control, including fine pointing and tracking; advanced power and cooling technologies that can be integrated onto military platforms; system automation including target recognition and prioritisation, aim-point selection, and engagement management; battle damage indication; and test and evaluation, including the ability to conduct real-time assessment of effects achieved. Proposals should be based around systems that sit within Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) 2-6.
The notification stated that the call for information is designed to inform MoD efforts “to understand the next steps necessary to develop and introduce DEW into service across land, sea, and air domains”, within a wider vision for the MoD of developing DEW capabilities as “a realistic choice for our armed forces, which can contribute a decisive edge and sustain strategic advantage.”
by Dr. Lee Willett
