The Ministry of Defence has confirmed its commitment to outfitting multiple Royal Navy ships with the DragonFire Laser Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) by 2027.

This clarification came in response to inquiries from John Healey MP, the Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, directed at the MOD regarding the specifics of the deployment timeline and selection of vessels for the DragonFire system.

James Cartlidge, the Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence, provided details on the plans for the DragonFire system during the parliamentary session.

Cartlidge confirmed that while the MOD is actively working to identify the first ship to be equipped with the laser system, the broader strategy includes a rollout to multiple ships.

“The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has committed to accelerating DragonFire Laser Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) into operational capability by equipping multiple Royal Navy ships with a DragonFire LDEW minimum deployable capability from 2027. During the development of the first DragonFire Directed Energy Weapon, the MOD will identify the most appropriate ship for first deployment of this capability to meet operational requirements and increase the capability of the Royal Navy as well as the number of ships we will fit with this capability.”

The DragonFire project, a joint venture led by defence contractors MBDA, Leonardo UK, and QinetiQ, has already showcased promising results in preliminary trials. These successful demonstrations have shifted the project from a conceptual phase to a feasible addition to the Royal Navy’s arsenal

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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98 COMMENTS

  1. So is this a case of phasing Missiles out with Dragon Fly been a success , or keeping both specially with Missiles been expensive 🤔

    • It’s more a replacement/supplement for CIWS than missiles considering the range, but aside from shooting at slow or unarmed drones I don’t see a situation where it would be used instead of CIWS

    • It depends on the effective range of the lasers which probably remains classified . Intuitively I would think this is an augmentation of the CIWS systems, and particularly effective against swarming drones. So could be a Phalanx replacement.

      • I wonder if it will also augment the 30mm guns. They talk about a 1km range for Dragonfire, which means it might already be a bit more. Perhaps with productisation and a bit of spiral development it might look to do a lot more.

        The sun is shining and it’s a glass-half-full sort of day.

        • That range likely to be degraded by the weather. Fog, mist, smoke, rain will probably reduce range.

      • It is an augmentation of CIWS. Line of sight weapon system so the incoming target has to be pretty close already. Reaction time and the ability to rapid fire and keep firing at a low cost per shot makes Dragonfire very very useful, especially against ballistic and hypersonic weapons.

        • Its not going to go against supersonic or faster weapons…not using current tech. Sub supersonic drones and cruise missiles

      • Microwave weapons would be more effective against swarming drones either that or any CIWS with airburst ammunition

      • Swarming drones offer a whole different engagement scenario. Here is a bit of math using nice easy to divide etc numbers. They are not representative of DF but offer a view of engagements…

        Say you engage at 5km with a 10s dwell time on a target doing 250Km/h. Time of flight for a target is 70 odd seconds from 5km to the ship or it and its compatriots will move fwd 700m.
        So with the dwell time, shift target and lock up time you can get maybe 7-10 engagements in ( As Range decreases dwell time decreases due to less atmospheric issues)

        If you are facing a 20 drone swarm you will get leakers…

        • Unless you double the power of the laser / equip 2 lasers. It does greatly balance the economies of the engagement though. At the moment shooting down £20k drones with a £1M missile (even if one accounts for the missile protecting more valuable assets) is still not ideal, but with the laser one is spending barely £1 a shot and suddenly you need to expend £0.5M worth of drones to have a realistic chance of hitting the ship.

    • They have some unique characteristics – the beam travels at the speed of light, so can hit pretty much anything moving at any speed so long as the tracker can see it. Also unaffected by windage or gravity, so the trajectory is completely flat. Line of sight, so need good field of view and like guns need to slew onto nd track target, can be used with optical or radar trackers.

        • I have no idea how far the laser remains at one coherent beam, but even at maximum range there are some good effects to be had even if the target is not burnt through…Such as blinding optical devices and causing local overheating of electronics etc.
          I would hope that this will be fitted in addition to, and not replacing any guns.
          AA

      • Physicist here. Not strictly true. Gravity does change the light path of a laser. Air movement will too, the light beam will be moved by air particles just like anything else – it’s why stars twinkle or scintilate. Of course it is orders of magnitude less than say a bullet but it is not unaffected. Also range will be limited by the diffusion of the light beam over distance. The beam will essentially ‘spread out’ as it collides with more and more air particles and lose that energy concentration you want. Lasers become much poorer in humid conditions, and sea air with all the atomised water and salt can degrade them significantly.

        • To add, at the ranges this is working at gravity is meaningless really. But it is there and gravity does bend light, as like anything else it follows the curvature of space-time as warped by mass.

        • Please do not forget atmospheric absorption. It may be designed to reduce the impact of water vapour, but it will not be as efficient in fog or dusty atmospheres. The real challenge will be turning a piece of static trials equipment into an operational device.
          Cannot however fault the attraction of a shot costing pounds and a missile costing hundreds of thousands.of pounds, or even millions.

          • That’s what I meant by dispersion! But absolutely. Can definitely see the use and attraction but people mustn’t believe this is some crazy panacea that will end the missile age. This just gives a captain other options.

        • Indeed but at visual range on the surface (and at much longer ranges in space, where they have nothing to collide with) these factors are so infintessimal as to be discounted.

        • Light also diverges, even in a vacuum, due to diffraction at the source. How relevant this is will depend on how well the laser source is designed (and how physically big it is); I don’t believe it can be eliminated entirely.

      • Dwell time, weather, atmospherics are all on the cons side.
        Physics is a bitch…
        DF It is its own optical tracker.

        • Yes I did some reading and of course it is its own tracker. I guess the answer is it can hit wehat it can see – but what it can see is affected by various factors. DF has an interesting design which can combine beams making the design scalable to much greater power output – the US and Israel are currently working on 300KW lasers (or combinations of lasers), wheras DF demonstrator is somewhere between 50KW and 70KW. Will be interesting to see how the MVP turns out, and what future evolutions look like.

          • US Slab lasers are also scalable but you do reach a finite limit due to materials and cooling.

          • The real question everyone wants to know is how long until we have pew pew guns. Hand held burning holes through people.

          • RCP2… Very Hush Hush… Fitted on Bridge screen and aft… Looked like an R2 D2. 😉

    • Multiple is any number from 2 upwards. So I’m going to take a gamble here and guess maybe 4 like they had with the anti ship missiles on the t45.

    • No. Missiles have longer range. Weather can render a laser useless as well so phalanx won’t be replaced either.

    • Horses for courses is my view. Dragon Fire should be able to deal with a selection of targets passing overhead (using the Red Sea as an example) yet missiles might be more suitable for some targets. I suspect it is yet to be determined exactly how lethal Dragon Fire will be against certain targets at certain distances in certain weather conditions. In the real world I suspect a mix of weapons is desirable.

    • Missiles work with rain, fog,, missiles can work over the horizon, you say to Aster30 to go to 10m altitude 100km range at certain azimut and it goes and then turn on its active radar.

      None of that is possible with a laser.

      There is also the issue of time, how many seconds the laser need to focus in a missile or drone surface to down it, and if they rotate and their aspect changes?

    • Lasers are not Star Wars Turbo lasers.
      DragonFire will have a range of probably 5-10kn (Weather dependent) against drones, subsonic missiles and surface vessels.
      Dwell time and power on the target will determine its effectiveness.
      Cheaper per shot yes but it will be part of a layered defence.
      Dont expect Guns and missiles to go anywhere.

  2. I think the hardest part will be to incorporate something strong enough to produce a perfectly straight beam of visible red light to accompany the laser.

    Maybe a smoke generator is needed like in nightclubs so you can see the laser beam.

    Otherwise all these artists impressions with red laser beams are going to make people think it doesn’t work if RN ships are not shooting visible light all over the place.

    If they can incorporate a “Peowww” or “Zingg” type sound effect on firing too.

    That would also be nice.

  3. And will the QE carriers get them? At least four empty 30mm spots there. What about the Ancilia decoy system, will that go on the carriers too? These big ships could do with some additional defensive armaments.

    • Id be happy if we got just two of the four planned DS30 30mm , 1 x Port 1 x Starboard given the emerging threat from sea born drones, “sea baby ‘ etc for the QEC but we would be mad not to fit Dragonfire too .

      • I’d rather see 40mm Bofors on those mounts. Far more effective & longer ranged v all targets than the current 30mm.

        • Agree in full ref 40mm Bofors but the planned for DS30 are better than nothing at all , Admiral Lord West even wrote a letter to the Times to that effect. Thoughts are I’d put Bofors 40mm with 3P ammo onto the B2 Rivers and port their DS30 over onto the QEC.

    • I think they would be perfect for the QE class. The carriers have a lot of spare electrical power. Lasers require no FOD walks. People might stop talking about the lack of a defence on our carriers, blinded by the pretty lights. And it would be a cool enough combination to make the headlines and help stimulate recruitment.

      Hopefully the IFF recognition system would be good enough to stop them zapping our own planes and drones. Because that would be considerably less cool.

  4. The key advantage is the lack of debris generation. The carriers should be covered in laser CIWS as a result

  6. Surely the first ships to receive them should be the aircraft carriers, then Type 45s, then the Type 26s?

    Seems quite obvious to me.

    • The system is relatively cheap both to purchase and operate. Why not just order 60-80 sets now and got them onto every one of our too few warships and RFAs?

    • If on the carriers I imagine they wouldn’t want any conflict with the Phalanx’s so it’ll be interesting to see where there placed.

  7. Not sure if anyone has more info on the programme than I do, but that seems like an acceleration of bringing them into active testing in the fleet?
    Good news, as presumably tests have gone very well.
    I think, although may be wrong, that these may be the first “proper” laser weapons fitted to a ship anywhere? I believe that the US only has laser dazzlers and suchlike on theirs, rather than destructive ones. But a lot can change before 2027!
    I wonder how much of that 3 year timescale is finding a platform and a timeslot for insertion for the laser, rather than continuing development for it?
    I don’t see T45 getting them unless a CIP overlaps, as they’re being dropped out of service for PIP and CAMM etc. already. Probably easier to put it on a new-build like T31 or T26? Or a big RFA platform where there’s loads of space, although they did say RN.

    • The joint MBDA, Leonardo and Qinetiq team have solved one of the major problems. Which is maintaining track on a moving target along with the beam’s spot focus. This is crucial to speeding up the burn through time, as the energy is concentrated in a given area for longer and in a tighter concentration. As Dragonfire is a fibre laser, that combines multiple laser beams. Ramping up the power above 50kW should be relatively easy. Hence what seems like the hurried pace to get the system fielded.

    • There are 8 ODIN laser/dazzlers on Burkes now. There is also one HELIOS as well, (on USS Preble) which is definitely a proper, destructive laser which is also tied in to AEGIS. It’s 60kw or greater now, and can reportedly be upgraded to 120-150 pretty quickly. The USN also has a high power microwave program, which might prove more useful.

  8. It’s the cost per shot equation. Dragonfire should in theory be able to take down cruise and ballistic missiles as a CIWS for a price of around £10k per shot. That’s pretty effective plus no silo or missile compartment or ammo storage requirement. Effectively as long as the system is maintained and the ship still has power it should be able to keep on shooting.

    • For ships with no missiles or guns already installed it’s a cheap option, but for ships with those anyway it’s a stupid idea.

      Lets say DF is £1m per unit and you need two. Compare that to a 30mm round at £100 and 10 rounds are needed. You would need 2000 targets on just that ship just to break even.

    • I don’t think it has power for ballistic missiles which are large generally. How much time the laser need to be facing a certain part of the missiles to destroy or deviate it?

      Note for example the difficulty if the missile rotates in its longitudinal axis – like for exemple some missiles do – or changes its aspect.

      I am convinced this device will be for slow drones.

      • Slow drones 100%👍
        As I have said many times … Its Physics…

        I did a long pa.per and presentation on Laser weapons when I was in the RN. Tech has improved over the years but you still face the laws of physics which unfortunately are immutable.

    • How does the laser cost 10k a shot? Do expensive parts need replaced every few shots? Ship power can’t cost that much for 50kw.

  9. I believe at this early stage we are talking about a relatively low power DEW system that may well need to be in contact with the incoming target for some time before critical damage can be caused. Therefore, ‘Dragonfire’ will almost certainly not be capable of replacing the fleet’s existing air defence systems and countering a ‘swarm’ style UAV attack in particular might be problematic.

    But again these are early days and it is most welcome that the UK seems to be one of the leading nations when ot comes to this interesting field of defence technology.

    • You have to field something to see how it works. Get them on every ship and do real-life testing. It is early days, and as the tech gets better who knows we may see 200…300…KW lasers capable of downing anti ship missiles. Bombs and large fast drones.
      What a great thing to put on a River B2…!
      AA

  10. For me it is very simple all ships of the RN and RFA if Dragon Fly is a success should have as a minimum two Dragon Flies and two Phalanx CIWS. If I had my way I would also add one MK41 block for Sea Ceptor to all RFA, LPD, CVF ships for 32 Sea Ceptors. This would give the carriers, assualt ships and logistic ships a good all round point defence against attack from the air. By the way does anyone know the capability of CAAM against missile?

    However, I do have some issues with any laser. Basic info red light laser works well in a vacum, fiber etc but in the atmosphere it has an issue with humidity. The more power it sends the more the water around the beam warms up thereby causing blooming, This means a reduced beam strenth at distance. Green laser is good for working in water however it has a reduced operating distance and a reduced beam strength. I did ask an old friend who is a Prof in this area in the Uni of Warsaw if it would be possible to use green laser to make the path (burn through) almost like creating a vacum tube and then shoot red laser up the created tube. Result possible but expensive to build. We did however come to the conclusion that green laser could be used in subs for navigation and underwater communications. We even worked out that green laser could be used in a point blank active sonar situation without the “one ping only” situation.

    Now comes my final issue and I know I will get some stick but here goes. Phalanx CIWS, yes it is a complete unit, yes it can be bolted on and bolted of. However is it really up to the job of the modern world. You can say it is better than nothing, and yet! Our Tide class, the future FRR ships, LPDs and dare I say the carriers need a point defence 7km out effective and 10km out possible. This is due to speed and mass of incoming missiles etc. So overall conculsion is that the carriers, LPDs, and RFA ships should for local defence one block of Mk41s for Sea Captors, two Dragon flies, two Phalanx and two-four BAE40mm guns. This gives a layered defence from 25km to 1km.

    There is one more issue to think about. Is it coming the time that the RN surface fleet might need nuclear power rather than turbines. You will need power for lasers, power for radars,power for computers, power for signal generators, power for weapons systems, power for genaral ship functions such as lights, galleys etc, and power to move. It might be that the future Type 83 could have the same power plant as the Dreadnought class sub due to the power requirements where up front cost is more but future capabilty cost is less?

    Eve in the upfront cost issue at the moment the MOD is paying the upfront cost forthe PWR 3 on the Dreadnought class subs, the future SSN-A will have some form of the PWR 3, that means a further 7 hopefully 9-12 SSN-As for the RN. The Aussies with a minimum of eight SSN-As will ive a minimum if 19 hopefully 24 PWR 4 reactors. This will reduce the cost of the steam keetle. If you then add a type 83 class fof 6 hopefully 9 then the cost might start to come down to the point where gas turbine/diesel generator requirements vs nuc powerplant over 30 years is cost effective, then who knows.

    Is it possi9ble, yes, look at our bombers, one in deep refit repair one on ops one working up and one in local refit mode.

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