DSEI 2021 – The Ministry of Defence have announced that Thales will develop and fit a directed energy weapon to a Type 23 frigate in order to test the system.

The first laser system will undergo user testing onboard a Royal Navy Type 23 frigate by detecting, tracking, engaging and countering Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, whilst the British Army’s Wolfhound armoured vehicle will host a laser demonstrator that will investigate capability against UAV and other air threats.

Additionally, the radio frequency demonstrator will also be used by the British Army, hosted on a MAN SV truck to detect and track a variety of air, land and sea targets. This will create around 30 new jobs at Thales in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

“The MoD has awarded three contracts worth around £72.5 million to UK industry to produce advanced laser and radio frequency demonstrators as part of the Novel Weapons Programme. Known collectively as Directed Energy Weapons (DEW), these next-generation technologies could revolutionise the battlefield and reduce the risk of collateral damage. The systems are powered by electricity and operate without ammunition, significantly reducing operating costs, increasing platform endurance and providing unprecedented offensive and defensive flexibility to personnel on the frontline.”

Awarded to consortia headed by Thales and Raytheon UK, the four-year contracts will create at least 49 new jobs and sustain 249 jobs.

Minister for Defence Procurement, Jeremy Quin, said:

“We are investing £6.6 billion in research and development across Defence over the next four years, reaffirming our commitment to provide the Armed Forces with truly advanced capabilities. Directed Energy Weapons are a key element of our future equipment programmes and we intend to become a world-leader in the research, manufacture and implementation of this next-generation technology.”

The Ministry ofDefence say that these capabilities will be integrated onto existing platforms for the Royal Navy and British Army and will undergo user experimentation from 2023 to 2025.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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89 COMMENTS

  1. Interesting field and one i feel the Uk is late to the party with. Israel and the US are already operating such devices in fact Israel has been working on Iron Beam a laser version of iron dome for a few years now. The other month they fitted such a device inside a Cessna and used it to take out a number of UAVs

    Turkey has been developing such a weapon and revealed to the world last month its NAZAR system, a system they started developing in 2016 google the below for a article on it:
    The NAZAR Laser Electronic Warfare System Unveiled at IDEF-21 For the First Time

    The Chinese, Russians have spent money on the project and I wouldn’t be surprised if the likes of Korea, Japan, Iran haven’t already done so as well

    Glad to see the Uk is also going down that path, but we appear to be late in a lot of things when it comes to the Military

    • I am not sure we are that late.

      There is zero point in deploying immature technology that is not 100% functional.

      Laser weapons are only just getting to the stage of being any use to anyone for anything and really they are a little way of being truely battlefield ready.

      I suspect that is is more to do with the trajectory of progress being stated that something useful to test will exist by that date.

      I would not be surprised if the test bed is Portland as it has the new power systems that will be in T26.

      Fun to speculate.

        • I think there will be a longish period where both are needed.

          They are complimentary in a layered system.

          Just my 20p worth……

          • Indeed especially as Phalanx has hardly had a stelar record in the few occasions it’s been used in action even if it’s supposedly been enhanced since those days but is increasingly being replaced by SeaRam by the US and others in their high end assets. However I feel a serious look at CIWS for future exploitation. Ships are going to need a range of defences and multiple close in even I suspect, as offensive weapons become increasingly potent and smart and I’m sure laser and microwave and no doubt other beamed weapons will play a vital role. Not confident kinetic weapons can take all the weight of this role come the late 20s and beyond.

          • Ram needs a mini command system , radar input to detect the target or an EW bearing line to slew the launcher onto the incoming missiles bearing line.

            If the missile is an ARM or IR homer then there is no EW bearing line and the missile needs to use the IR homing mode , not its RF homing mode.

            If the incoming missile is a stealthy IR homer you will need the radar to give you a bearing line to shoot down. If the incoming is a mix of IR and ARM homers you will lose your radar in a bright flash and lots of shrapnel and then you are royally screwed.

          • In 81 watched what was at the time a Top Secret film of phalanx taking out an am39 Exocet phalanx locked on engaged and splashed its intended target with just yards too spare ,MOD was dithering whether to purchase them I truly now,believe in getting a Degree in Hindsight Have a weapon and not need it then not have the weapons when needed

          • In 83 I was operating the 910 tracker video system when Sea Wolf shot down an exocet off Wales. By then phalanx was being bought in for everything that didn’t have Sea Wolf.

        • It its to combat swarms, even phalanx would struggle to intercept 100 plus cheap drones / rockets launch to saturate defenses. Having said the I don’t think current laser technology can take out 100 plus drones in a short space of time either. I guess its all about options and layers.

        • Reaper they have the potential to be far superior once the kinks are worked out – especially with targeting, cooldown, reload times etc. But I agree that I’m more comfortable with the idea of a kinetic intervention against an incoming projectile.

          I imagine that direct energy weapons have a greater effective range then Phalanx, so they might be the first line in a layered defence on ships. Meaning that a ship would still retain a kinetic option if something gets past the laser show.

        • Well DEW is cheaper per shot, lasers are faster than kinetic weapons (speed of light) and could i imagine provide an effective line of sight defence against something like anti ship missiles.

    • Simply put, we do not have the urgency of Israel, and we just aren’t the United States. In my view, until a majority of countries, at least major countries, have something, one cannot be late to anything.

        • The Israeli government owns and invests in much of the domestic defence industry, so it is protected. Also they have a citizen armed forces, so most technologists are also soldiers at the weekend.

        • What do they say, “necessity is the mother of invention”? Iron Dome missiles cost a pretty packet – to defend Israel from Hamas’ and Iran’s hundreds of thousands of rockets would require enormous banks of missiles and I expect would cost far more to defend than the Iran would spend to attack – asymmetric economic warfare.

          Lasers, at pounds per shot could totally re-balance those scales and finally put them ahead of the threat. I guess Iran is holding off from unleashing a massive conventional attack because of Israel’s nuclear deterrent. If Iran gets the bomb things all change.

      • Agreed we simply can’t afford (both technically and financially) to get so much wrong so that we are first to the show certainly outside of an emergency scenario and as Reaper says below Israel is both in an emergency scenario and gets billions of American aid to produce its weapons often with unique US tech and with the proviso the US gets priority in this feeding back into its own defence system. Equally as good as their stuff is it’s often I think their active experience and professionalism with much of that tech that fine tunes it’s abilities and promotes the pr around it. I hate to say it but I suspect the US exploits that knowledge to the full. Then we have to note that while Israel gained a big reputation in drones even Turkey using then as a base design considerably improved upon them in recent years and the Watchkeepers we acquired have hardly been a roaring success in our weather conditions.

        So I think we have to be wary of simply presuming they are supreme at what they produce militarily, there’s a lot more depth to the overall question. One can perhaps see it mirroring the view of German and Japanese ‘invincibility’ in the early war years that was more down to years of war fighting experience than the quality of the weapons they used throughout their forces even if some were indeed excellent. The irony there is the more the Germans weapons actually improved the less success they had because circumstances started to work against them in various ways, strategic, experience, numbers and technical.

        • Tell that to the Chinese, they’ve been developing lasers for infantry the only protection against these sort of weapons is the known Frequency of the laser I don’t really think their into adhering too the rules set down by Geneva

          • I thought we set ourselves a higher standard than that of the Chinese; such as democracy, the rule of law, not committing genocide, etc.

          • If you don’t support the party then you’ll always be silenced one utterance of decent can mean imprisonment or worse

          • 60-61AD Boadicea was I think the last Brit to commit genocide when she slaughtered the population of Londinium

          • I don’t think that would qualify as genocide, though it was a slaughter.
            Whereas of course China is currently committing genocide to the Uyghurs.

            As I said, I believe the U.K. strives to have better standards that the CCP, and that includes abiding by the Geneva Convention.

          • Çhina’s persecution of religious minorities isn’t just directed towards the Uyghurs ,Christians are in the firing line as well re-education camps and imprisonment .The world sèe’s it and knows about it but the Chinese population doesn’t

          • I would believe that looking into the capabilites of this new generation of laser defence weapons would be used against unmanned, threats . I don’t think that Lasers were incorporated into the Geneva convention in 82 I might be wrong Sean

          • Correct I just didn’t remember.ber the Latin names for each town she’d probably end up in the Hague in today’s world

    • None of those are officially operational systems. And companies quite often put into operation demostration units before they are ready for being deployed; either as advanced testing or to try and keep their funding.

      As others have mentioned here, the UK absolutely has been investing in directed energy weapons.

      It’s like the PLA Navy and their railgun. Yes, they put it on a ship. Has anyone actually seen it being operated though?

    • That’s the big question isn’t it or do these weapons or systems have a different or complimentary role, or even timescale? Difficult to discern but now that they have come to the fore I’m sure some answers real or speculated will percolate out. However considering their weight and expertise in this area it’s difficult to see how Leonardo and MBDA can simply be excluded from such weapon systems at this stage as surely some of their tech cannot simply be discarded or replaced that easily especially after 3 to 5 years of previous highly paid commitment to the laser programme. The silence is strange.

    • No, this is completely separate to Dragonfire. This program is for a highly directional RF jammer. Which will be used to overwhelm a drone’s radio datalink control signal. Depending on the transmitted power, it may also cause severe electromagnetic interference (EMI) that damages electronic components. Thereby causing a drone to loose control.

  4. It’s new tech, so no one will fess up to much of anything. Laser technology is not something you can demonstrate that easily, however it is something every nation and its dog could claim to own.

    We’ve all seem the ‘laser’ pens, torches etc at use, so I think it is fair to say that somewhere in a ‘bunker’ someplace has a person called “Q” working on it.

        • The US is trialing such weapons true, it even shot down an Iranian drone with one but that was an early test of concept prototype similar to what is about to happen here it seems. They are already as reported early this year moving on to an upgraded version so they are still some way from delivering a final production version on their ships, their new ships are to be built with far upgraded power delivery to fully exploit the real thing. Similar situation on land though closer to a production version I think after successful tests, but then that’s a lot less capable as it’s an anti drone weapon.

          Equally British companies have been quite active in their programs particularly RR who are developing the Williams derived technology to supply instant power for the lasers. Interestingly heard nothing of them working on the British projects though that same tech must surely be exploited here too even if other aspects of their work might be US only if developed by their US subsidiaries.

    • Funny how the US ARM and USN land based tests seem to happen at white sands …a desert location at an altitude of 3500ft with no moisture, air pollution or fog!

      Its been on USN ships in the Gulf but again its going to be weather constrained. Even to day having just been outside my office on the waterfront in Bahrain, its hazy at 0730 and already pushing high 30s, humidity is over 50%…another lovely day in the Gulf!

  6. Does it have the power? With all the add ons to the type 23s over the years must use far more power these days, did lifex help in this are yeah?

    • We had one fitted in July 82 very hush hush at the time it was Argon based a pilot blinder not a plane destroyer very pretty green beam but lord did it draw the Amps had to place 2 amplifiers to make it work had to have it removed prior to returning from the Falklands

      • Cheavage!

        Was great on night shoots.
        Big amps, chilled water supply and a bicycle brake handle to open the aperture to get the laser beam out
        Was removed because it was made to wound not kill people ( Blind them) so it was against the Geneva Convention and rules for war in that you employ stuff to kill not maim

        • It was rather Heath Robinson in its set up everyone thought it was going to make a BBC sound effect when the lever was pulled then Nothing damn

          • The TAS apes operated it when we where in the Gulf in the late 80s because they had nothing better to do…no ASW threat in the Gulf during the tanker war just floating mines and Boghammers…They had bought sound effect key fobs in Dubai and let Star Trek phaser sounds loose over the Gunnery Broadcast when they where firing it!

          • We passed a 22 in the gulf whilst preparing to mow the lawn (sweeo) might of been the London and oow ask me what the fxxx are those by the Bridge I told him looks like an Argon Laser. His reply Yeah lasers with photon torpedoes

    • The One that was fitted was to blind the pilot not capable of doing a Death star scene it was dismantled before we returned from the Falklands

  14. Its not going to replace phalanx.
    Its not going to knock down missiles
    Its not going to be much use out further than , if you are lucky, than about 3 Km

    Its for knocking down drones and engaging boat swarms.
    Its going to be very dependent on weather and atmospheric conditions.
    For a T23 its a good fit. Post Sea Wolf there is lots of additional power and cooling available. It saves having to use a Ceptor to kill a small loitering airborne drone.
    For boat swarms it will add an extra layer to the already fitted 4.5 and 30mm.

    On a T45 same again, means you dont need to use a Ceptor/ASTER to kill a drone and it will back up Phalanx.

  16. excellent. its imrtant that the u.k stay at the forefront of laser technology. its not rocket science to understand that the future of warfare lies in this kind of area. the u.k must lead the way on it

  17. Possible seismic shift in Australian submarine contract with France:

    to be cancelled.

    Australia will now want nuclear attacks submarines instead with US and or UK input.

  18. Submarines:
    Australia, US and UK to form AUUKUS under a new nuclear defence pact.
    Scott Morrison will announce Australia’s submarine program will “go nuclear” under a new defence pact that could spell bad news for China.

    • Australia should of asked us a few years ago whilst we still had the S and T hunterkillers they could have been a stop gap prior to China’s expansion Hindsight again

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