The Secretary of the Navy last week said the service plans to accelerate investment and deployment of weapons like the Lockheed Martin [LMT] high-energy laser with integrated optical-dazzler and surveillance (HELIOS) over the next five years to help defend against swarm attacks.
Ahead of the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium, Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, commander of Naval Surface Forces, also known as SWO Boss, said he wants to see the Navy accelerate deployment of directed energy weapons to defend against threats like those recently launched from Houthi forces in the Red Sea (Defense Daily, Jan. 9).
McLane noted even though the Afloat Staging Base Ponce (AFSB(I)-15) tested a 30-kilowatt laser weapon for three years in the Middle East a decade ago, those kinds of systems are not yet deployed widely in the surface Navy.
“Like the SWO Boss, I’m concerned that it’s taken a long time to come to fruition,” Del Toro told reporters following his remarks at the conference on Jan. 10.
“This is the way of the future and we are going to be looking at the fiscal year ‘26, ‘27 and into the [Future Years Defense Program or FYDP] on how to accelerate the deployment of HELIOS and HELIOS-like capabilities on our DDG 51 platforms, because it is the way that we will need to address the swarm attacks of drones and other systems, whether they be on the surface, or they actually be in the air,” he added.
The FYDP encompasses budget plans for the next five years.
Del Toro also underscored the USS Preble (DDG-88) has been testing the HELIOS past the initial experimentation point and “we will be continuing to do experiments – I don’t want to get into specifics, but over the course of the next year, for example, even less, that will fully flush out how we can employ this incredibly transformative system.”
He said HELIOS is energy dependent but can be operate off of a current Arleigh Burke-class destroyer “without having to modify the engineering plan a whole lot other than for cooling, and things like that.”
Lockheed Martin delivered the initial 60+ kilowatt (kW) HELIOS unit to the Navy in August 2022, whereupon the service installed it on the Preble. HELIOS aims to disable unmanned aircraft systems and small boats in the high power setting while it also has a second low power setting as a counter-UAS intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) dazzler to confuse enemy systems. The system also feeds ISR data into a ship’s combat system.
In 2021, a Lockheed Martin official said while HELIOS was designed for a 60 kW output, it likely can reach a maximum output up to 100-120 kW (Defense Daily, Jan. 21, 2022).
Del Toro said he has had a “strong conviction that the way of the future has everything to do with laser technology, with microwave technology” since he came into the position.
However, Adm. Fred Pyle, director of the surface warfare division, N96, said during the conference that the Navy and the multiple stakeholders on directed energy weapons need to “have an honest conversation on risk. And sometimes we have a tendency to over promise and under deliver.”
“We need to flip that to when we’re intellectually honest, when we’re honest with ourselves from a technology capability, that we have an agreed upon sight picture of what it’s going to look like to deliver that capability,” he continued.
Speaking to reporters during the event, Pyle added that the directed energy investments are hard and “we’re still working with that technology. It requires space, weight, power and cooling, which can be a challenge on our current surface combatants.”
He noted the Navy is “very focused on delivering directed energy capability. And we’re building it in the future to fit in mind with our frigate and the DDG(X) program.”
Pyle said directed energy weapons could still be added to the next Flight III DDG multi-year procurement ships, but the space, weight, power and cooling considerations mean there is a limitation to the capability that can be added to a ship like a DDG-51.
In contrast, those requirements are being kept in mind, “so we have a much higher upper range for [next-generation destroyers] DDG(X)and [Constellation-class frigates] FFG-62.”