Chancellor Rachel Reeves has confirmed an additional £2.2 billion in defence funding for the next financial year, describing the measure as a “downpayment” on the Government’s plan to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027.
The funding injection was announced as part of the Spring Statement, amid wider public spending constraints and global increases in borrowing costs.
The Treasury says the money is new, and is separate from the £6.4 billion uplift previously outlined by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in February. It will be used to fund the development and deployment of advanced technologies within the UK’s Armed Forces, with a particular emphasis on directed-energy weapons and AI.
A centrepiece of the funding announcement is the expanded rollout of the UK’s DragonFire laser-directed energy weapon. The Ministry of Defence had previously committed to installing the system on a single Royal Navy vessel by 2027, but the new funding will allow deployment on four ships within the same timeframe.
DragonFire, developed by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) in partnership with MBDA, Leonardo and QinetiQ, is a high-precision laser capable of destroying drones and other aerial targets at significant range. The weapon can reportedly strike a £1 coin from one kilometre away, and defeat drones up to five kilometres away.
Officials highlight the system’s cost-effectiveness, with each shot costing less than £10. A 10-second burst is said to consume the same power as a domestic heater running for one hour. The system offers the potential for a low-cost, sustainable alternative to traditional missile interceptors for certain tasks.
DragonFire has already demonstrated its ability to engage aerial targets at militarily relevant ranges. The Army and Royal Navy are both evaluating the technology for future air defence roles.
Reeves said the extra funding would not only strengthen national security but act as a stimulus for economic growth by driving demand across the UK’s defence industrial base.
“The changing world presents challenges, but it also presents new opportunities,” Reeves said. “We will put defence at the heart of our modern industrial strategy… That is how we make our country a defence industrial superpower.”
As part of this strategy, the Government will:
- Spend a minimum of 10% of the equipment budget on novel technologies like AI and drones.
- Establish a protected £400 million innovation fund within the Ministry of Defence to rapidly bring new technologies to the frontline.
- Reform procurement processes to enable faster, more agile delivery and widen access to contracts for small businesses.
- Launch a £2 billion extension to UK Export Finance capacity to help international buyers purchase UK defence goods and services.
- Support jobs in key defence hubs including Barrow, Portsmouth, Glasgow, Derby, Newport, and Deeside.
The Spring Statement also included pledges to secure improved housing for military families and to establish a Defence Growth Board to coordinate investment and oversight.
Economic Headwinds
The announcement comes as the Chancellor faces fiscal pressures elsewhere, with increased borrowing costs and flatlining economic growth wiping out the £9.9 billion fiscal headroom previously available. Despite the constrained environment, Reeves maintained that investment in defence remains a core priority, both for security and industrial development.
The Government has committed to reaching 2.5% of GDP in defence spending by 2027, with an aspiration to reach 3% in the following Parliament. The new funding is described as the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War.
As global instability rises, the UK is betting on defence investment not only as a shield against emerging threats, but as a catalyst for innovation and job creation at home.
Great news. Any idea which ships?
Type 45’s that have finished PIP.
Trouble of doing them on ships threat it’s already been completed on, is more time out of service. Doing this at the same time as the PIP would have made more sense. Then there is the upgrade in the missiles to be done. Great to have upgraded ships but at some point we might actually need them to do their job
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I’d imagine that’s exactly when Dragonfire will be fitted – during SVE.
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Yeah, apparently they’re the only escorts that have the electrical capacity to handle DragonFire, until the T26s come into service.
But they only consume the same power as a domestic heater running for one hour?
If you look down thread I’ve tried to make sense of that in power terms.
It is an awful lot of power TBH as a domestic heater is at least 1kW probably closer to 2.5kW for a fan heater.
2kwh delivered in 10 seconds… that’s a lot, infact is huge… essentially that’s the output of a 720kw heater.. your house can take 24Kw on a 100a fuse at 240v so if you pushed that through a load of domestic houses you would trip 30 power supplies..
A Tesla supercharger that can charge an electric car to go 300 miles only delivers 150kws so that’s the equivalent of almost 5 Tesla super chargers all charging teslas…
@Jonathan,
They’ll use a capacitor bank. So the laser will have a ‘rate of fire’ limitation like any other weapon system. So fitting the weapon will also be a matter of space for the capacitor bank which have got massively smaller since I last saw a high energy storage capacitor bank some err 30 years ago!
In short you wouldn’t need a generator to provide that level of power. It wouldn’t work very well, anyway, as it would be off load for most of the time, so a smaller generator constantly feeding a capacitor bank or two. Such a set up would also isolate the rest of the ship’s systems from the sudden demand load when the laser fires – we don’t need another pre-PIP systems crash scenario again!
Cheers CR
Cheers CR
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Only in the UK could we be fitting laser beams before anti ship missiles.
Only in the UK would we be buying four laser beams for 6 ships.
4 Dragonfire by 2027, the timeframe by which the RN had I originally had planned to have just 1 installed.
Nothing in the article says 4 ONLY.
Indeed, given the small cost per shot, the Treasury will be pushing to have it deployed on all ships as a cost-saving measure.
Air defence is a higher priority that anti-ship. These days most ships are sunk by air-attack, not ship-on-ship engagements.
Rather disingenuous post on your part.
Been saying this for years.
Ships don’t line up like Jutland lobbing ASM at each other. Even finding and targeting a moving enemy on the ocean is difficult.
Russia will hide its fleet in the Barents Sea if it went hot.
The main weapon should be an ASM launched by our Fast Jets and then the SSN, which is also the primary ASW asset.
A glaring hole still unfilled since Sea Eagle.
ASM on the Escorts is good to have as well if it has a Land Attack role as well.
Completely agree.. the obsession with long range heavy weight ASMs has always been something I found fascinating.. many many warships have been killed or mission killed since the invention of the ASM and in that time there has never been one instance of a one large surface combatant firing at and successfully attacking another major surface combatant with a heavy weight ASM.
Ships are sunk or mission killed by the following ( in order of prevalence)
1) light weight anti ship missiles launched by small ship flights.. this was mastered by the RN who have killed more surface combatants than any other post war navy and by using small ship fights armed with a small short range ASM.
2) fixed wing aircraft armed with anti ship missiles.. again this is almost always within radar horizon range of surface ships..around 20-30 miles.
3) small fast surface vessels using lighter ASMs against each other or other larger vessels
4) large surface combatants using a mix of missile types against small surface combatants in close range
5) submarines using torpedoes.
Navies don’t fling their large surface combatant at each other firing off heavy weight ASMs at 100miles distances..that’s all fantasy lane stuff to be honest…radar horizons and the ability to detect, firm up a contact, track and identify then maintain a kill chain dictation engagement distances.
All that maybe true but, we don’t know how a current and future scenario’s are going to play out. Some of potential adversaries are very well armed with heavy ASHMs plus have extensive satellite coverage and large submarine fleets. We shouldn’t be under done to do combat in these areas either.
It’s worth noting that the UK has had 7 different Heavyweight Anti Ship missiles over the last 50 years…
Exocet – Ship launched
Exocet – (Land launched Excalibur at Gibraltar)
Harpoon – Ship launched
Harpoon – Air launched
Sub Harpoon – Submarine launched
Martel – Air launched
Sea Eagle – Air launched
We have yet to launch one in anger….
You been saying this for years ?
Have you been saying it to the right people or just on here ?
I’m guessing that it would make more of an impact if you said it to those in command than us lot on here.
Personally I do try to lobby my local MP when I think it is important to do so.
Not that it has ever made any difference though.
Hi Freddie.
Only on here, and it is my opinion. So no, I won’t be telling “those in command” as what opinions I give, and what everyone says here, is irrelevant, as I am a civilian.
But as this subject has cropped up several times, and my opinion on it has not changed, then yes, I’ve been saying it for years.
Ha, my MP….I have contacted them on a few issues over the years on non defence issues and the most I got was a generic stock reply from their aides.
Utter waste of time. On Defence, MP’s with any defence interest beyond what jobs in their constituency? With the exceptions of the ex military ones they have no clue or interest in defence until they are cowering in their home due to a terror outrage or actual attack.
Agreed, and even at the likes of Jutland it was preferable to sink German battleships using torpedo armed destroyers first, rather than endanger your our battleship in a slug-fest.
It’s always been the case in warfare, you try and counter your enemy with a different force time.
They have infantry, send in cavalry.
They have cavalry, send in lancers.
Etc etc etc.
I’m not trying to be disingenuous, other websites are reporting four systems to be purchased and my point on the anti ship missile is that the NSM upgrade was announced a long time ago and still has got no where near the T45 fleet.
Laser beams didn’t really exist when we announced the NSM upgrade and now we will have them on the T45 before it gets a pretty basic anti ship missile fit.
NSM being deployed on the third frigate at the moment, per the timeline set in Nov 2022 (26mths ago) – which was 3 warships at pace including 1 in just over 12mths. That might not sound fast but if they were only expecting one in just over a year, then 3 after 26 months sounds about right. Presumably a further ship every 6mths at that rate, meaning that by end 2027 there’d be 8-9 with NSM and 4 with Dragonfire.
Is there any advantage to be fitted on the T45s when they’ll be sailing with a T23 in any event which requires large naval strike. Presumably it can be keyed up by the T45 and just lobbed off the deck of a T23 when needed.
NSM was being bought primarily for T45 fleet to replace harpoon. T26 will get FC/ASW
11 NSM sets were bought.
That would appear to be to equip T45 and T31.
T45 required integration into BAE CMS.
T31 is less of an issue as NSM was already integrated into TACTICOSS
I can see this being really useful in the more northern NATO areas all 24 hours a day all year round.
Can someone with more knowledge explain the extra £2.2B part to me? “Launch a £2 billion extension to UK Export Finance capacity to help international buyers purchase UK defence goods and services.” Is this a part of that £2.2B? Shouldn’t that £2.2B fund go towards our actual defence and not aiding defence exports?
I do not think so no, those will take the form of intra-country loans and are a really effective way of securing international orders
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great idea. I just want to make sure it’s not being funded from the defence budget.
Just Dragonfire, forces housing and HMNB Portsmouth upgrade are being funded by the extra money, plus presumably filling funding gaps in existing deliveries.
Forces housing is incredibly important and key to topping the flow of talent out of the Armed Forces.
I love the Idea of free housing… How do I go about it please ?
First off you need to get to Calais. try and find a chap who’s selling a seat on a large inflatable that’s going to the South Coast of England. When you arrive make sure you get collected by Border force who will ask you nicely to fill out some forms and an application for housing. Voila!
There are three lumps of money, all roughly the same amount, around £2bn+. The first is the original increase in Defence spending to cover inflation and growth. The second is an increase to the government loan scheme for the Defence industry the third, just announced is an extra lump to add to the original.
When the original sum was announced, it outpaced inflation and growth and added a little extra, maybe £750m. Since then inflation has gone up significantly and we’d have been lucky if we didn’t get cuts.
The second sum is new and being loans to industry, HMG would hope to get it’s money back. The final lump, in my opinion, is a recognition that the first was too small. It seems to be very real and although small, very welcome. I said we could have been heading for relative cuts because of inflation. This last sum take out of the danger zone.
I still think we should have gone straight to 2.5%, but this is a little something, which is better than a whole lot of nothing.
Separate
2.2 billion extra investment in defence next year
400 million innovation fund..essentially small medium sized defence industries development fund ( probably go to drone development companies)
2 billion in government loans to essentially make British defence exports more attractive ( I suspect Ukraine will take up most of it TBH).
So essentially 4.6 billion at national defence infrastructure.
Not loans… ECA’s provide guarantees for debt so that Banks will lend and at lower rates of interest.
Government does both loans and export credits. The direct lending facility gives cheap loans to the overseas buyers who are purchasing UK goods. There was a pool of £8bn, £2bn of which was hypothecated to clean growth and renewables. That’s been increased to £10bn, with the extra £2bn reserved to defence sales.
Good news that tangible defence spending is increasing, however, we do not know what the long-term costs will be due to too many international issues and repatterning of the global military balance. Currently, the World is facing: Ukraine / Russia, Israel – Gaza / Lebanon, Yemen / Iran and pending US activity, North Korea / South Korea, China / Taiwan, US Greenland claim against Denmark and all could and does have economic and military consequences.
Amazing just how irrelevant the UN has become we really are back to 19th Century power broking and without us having much of a say in it. By the way watching US politics Trump has so far shared or is trying to shaft everyone and every body that has done a deal with him, law firms, media, Countries and Universities included. Is Starmer even aware of this?
Starmer and HMG are just playing for time. No one expects any kind of deal. “Trade talks” are revolving around non issues like AI and being held by JD Vance who is a non person.
It’s a worry though that if the likes of Putin, Trump and even Xi may think they can and will operate above international laws and norms then what will happen to the place and authority of all those laws, norms, treaties, conventions created, sponsored and abided by the majority of members of the UN and its other bodies? Will it just be back to a free for all by some? Those that can and do and those that follow?
It depends what everyone else does to be honest. The US is ultimately going to turn inwards and beyond Taiwan China is not that expansionary . Han Chinese are incredibly racist and have no desire to bring in undesirables as they see it from places like Vietnam or Korea. Russia under Putin is expansionary but lacks the industrial base to do much about it.
The rest of the world being basically the EU, Commonwealth plus Japan is more than able to look after the world if it chooses to do so and it’s likely the rules based order will continue because it’s in everyone interests to do so.
Occupying countries is now nearly impossible. All of NATO was unable to subdue small countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. The reason empires like the British empire worked is that most of the people in the empire had no idea it existed. With the rise of media came nationalism and that put an end to occupation and there was never any money in building empires that required coercive force.
Sadly it looks like the UN is just becoming a repeat of the League of Nations…
Sounds like it’s needed. In the full publication of the US signal leaks the US was pretty clear that nobody in Europe can now stop the more advanced missiles coming out of Yemen.
I know others may disagree with that assessment but it sounds like Iran have given them more capable ASBM and ASCM that the UK may struggle with.
It will be interesting if they go through the Red Sea with the carrier I guess.
Unlikely to be honest a short range BM is a short range BM you can either shot one down or you cannot and Iran is not a hot bed of the most advanced ABMs and missile tec..so that’s just BS really.
And the simple reality is you don’t get a more advanced air defence missile than system than sea viper… it’s just it cannot yet handle medium range ABMs with ranges of 1000Km +
Well if the drunk weekend Fox News caster said it on signal it must be true.
Ballistic trajectory BM seem to be bread and butter for Patriot class ABM. The problem and what is worrying the US seems to be that Yemen, Iran and others are using no ballistic trajectory or very high speed as a defensive technique. Fortunately the Houtis appear to have been giving the USN in particular plenty of practice so the chances of success are hopefully reducing.
I wouldn’t place too much store in what the idiot amateurs in that Signal group said.
I think you’ll find those “amateurs” are actually very well paid professionals. The VP gets about quarter of a million a year, a mansion near the White House, Air Force Two at his beck and call, armoured cars, all government travel paid for, including food, lodging and incidentals, secret service protection, a vote in the senate (I wonder how much that’s worth), and a very fat pension. “Idiots” on the other hand, I can’t quibble about.
Spyinthesky, no one knows what to do with Trump most of all the power base in Washington. Trump is a spinning whiskey glass and where it stops determines the agenda. The situation is very worrying for the World as he shows no respect for the established norms and diplomacy, thus anyone with a modicum of a brain is very wary about dealing with him. He’s behaving similarly to England’s ancient kings and queens, who most could hardly read but managed to place a deadly finger of fate on destiny. That said, the Court of King Trumpy will undergo many transformations as the inner court is dispensed with one by one, though their heads will not be presented to the ‘Keeper Of The Heads’, they will be replaced in haste and panic. Meanwhile, the World will keep spinning.
I’ve got a cunning plan…… Why don’t we send all the Old, Sick, Disabled, Poor folk to fight in Ukraine ? It’ll free up untold Billions and also free up so many homes for the “Boat people”.
It just makes so much sense.
Jim, can you have a word with your good friend Rachel from accounts ?
“The Treasury says the money is new, and is separate from the £6.4 billion uplift previously outlined…”
That suggests a total uplift of £8.6 billion. If true that really is good news…
Cheers CR
No this is in addition to the £3.2bn announced for 2025/26 in September, so £5.4bn extra in cash terms. The £6.4bn is the extra in real terms we’ll spend annually once at 2.5%
Depends how you count it. Cumulatively over three years, it should end up even more than that, because we’ll get extra this year, extra next year and still get whatever it takes to reach 2.5% in 2027.
It’s good news. Not stellar but definitely good.
I would have thought the carriers were a good base for Dragonfire, given the system operates FOD free?
True – hopefully the relevant Boffins have thought of that too 🤔.
There’s currently four empty sposon spaces waiting for something on the carriers. I wonder if the Phalanx’s will still be kept and if also fitted with Dragonfire? A couple of 40mm for greater depth of defence might be useful too.
Certainly would be a good idea, fitted where the 30mm were originally planned to go.
It will cost 10£ to destroy a 1£… now that’s an impressive achievement!
Seriously, lasers have their limitations, simultaneously hitting targets, whether conditions etc. This a great achievement but not a silver bullet, I just hope they get their priority straight
“ A 10-second burst is said to consume the same power as a domestic heater running for one hour.”
Interesting a demotic Hester us between 1 and 3kW.
So that is 1 – 3kW/hrs…..which is quite a lot over 10s…..that is between 360 and 1000kW….which sounds high to me….if it really is that powerful that is quite something. It is the sort of bust you could get out of three or so sets of high performance EV batteries quite easily.
Blast no edit function..
“ Interesting a domestic heater is between 1 and 3kW.
Leave it as it is. I want to see RN ships armed with Demotic Hesters.
Dragonfire is in the ’50kw range’. That info is publicly available. Taking a ‘small electric heater’ to be about 1 kW (more than that isn’t really small), then an hour’s running is 3600 kj, which implies 360 kW for a ten second burst. Fibre lasers are at best 30% efficient (the rest is waste heat), which would equate to about 100kw. Enough info to give a reasonable idea of the kind of output we’re talking about
Very possibly true.
Reality is that we don’t know and there was talk, in MoD press releases, of 150kW.
So it is quite the power range.
That’s the beauty of a fibre laser, their output is more scalable. If I remember correctly, Dragonfire after its first publicly announced shot was 50kW. But that was more than 5 years ago. Today they have sorted out the automatic focusing and tracking. So in that 5 year period, I could quite easily believe the power output has significantly increased.
Hope this Dragonfire system isn’t too blinding to operate from the shooters perspective? Everyone might need some pretty strong 😎 when shooting these off!
I think Dragonfire’s beam is towards the IR end, so it isn’t actually visible apart from the damage to the target.
So the image above will have been takes using an IR tracking system.
Like Phalanx I would have thought they will be completely Autonomous, so not likely to be an issue.
Powerful visible light lasers (i.e., in the hundreds of watts or kilowatts) can be very dangerous to eyes, even from reflected light bouncing off whatever is hit.
I suspect Dragonfire would be able to able to damage human vision or optics if it struck someone directly even at several times the range it can inflict serious or fatal burn damage (then again, no one wants to get a bullet in their eye either), but it doesn’t seem to operate in the frequencies that would allow it to function as a purpose-designing blinding or dazzle laser, with all the legal complications thereof.
If the above wasn’t clear, I mean “a visible light laser will be a significant hazard, but dragonfire isn’t, so it should probably only risk blinding someone who was directly hit by the beam at a range that is too great to injure”. E.g., if you aimed it at a piloted aircraft’s cockpit 10-20 km away.
I wonder if it would be better use of funds to install the 57mm gun from type 31 on the type 45 .
To achieve what?
Well to give it a cheap effective way to down drones out to 11km
Being an AAW specialist Ship, the 57mm has better utility, NGS is a good capability to have with the MK8 but we’re unlikely to see the Type 45’s doing it.
No, but it would be a good idea in addition to Dragonfire.
Once the T23s are retired the T45s will be in the only ships in the fleet with that gun. Whereas the 57mm will be on all the T31s.
Better for air-defence and the NGS role is now redundant.
“ the NGS role is now redundant.”
Hmmme
Well if you have a swarm of largish boat drones , say based on trawlers, coming towards you I’d say a volley of 4.5” shells would answer that question most effectively?
But as far as I understand it a 57mm is a far more effective weapon against that boat swarm.
And complete removal of the 45inch would make economic sense as removing the entire system and all its support structures is what saves money.
Do lasers work in poor weather such as fog?
It will lose effectiveness in such cases
Just done the maths around the claim of a 10 second bust being the equivalent of a heaters energy use over an hour… if that’s the case the RN have got one hell of powerful laser naval laser compared to everyone else.
If you use a 2kW heater example and that 2 kWh was released in 10 seconds that’s the equivalent of 720kw… that’s a serous powerful laser, Lockheed are working on a 300kw laser with a plan to get to 500kw for the US army the U.S. navy are deploying a 60kw system ( Helios ) on its burkes..
The difference between input (consumes) and output will account for some of it. The very best efficiencies are 50%, so at 40% your 720kW becomes 288kW, and 500kW becomes 200kW. Still very powerful, but not ahead of LM. However, spot size will also significantly affect utility, and Dragonfire has boasted very small spot size compared to the US systems.
And power density on target is what matters for a burn through. I once cut a 2″ slit in the sleeve of my sweatshirt as I inadvertently moved my arm through the beam of a 10W focused laser..! 🙂
The UK has been quietly getting on with researching laser DEW for decades now and these are not the first to be deployed by the RN… The RN deployed a small number of dazzle weapons back in the ’90’s. A Spanish jouno, if I remember rightly, spotted them mounted on T22’s and blew the whistle. They were withdrawn later.
Cheers CR
Earlier mate. The LDS went to the Falklands too I recall.
As a note of interest, QE has or is in the process of having her CIWS removed, I wonder if she’ll get them first ?
I am not sure how you did the calculations but from what I read Dragonfire is a 50KW laser, they might be able to increase the output by 2027, the Americans have already ground based versions of 40-60KW and a navel version of 300KW but it is less mature than the ground based, Israel will be fielding its 100KW by the end of the year and the chinese have a 20KW commercial version already, but it is good for shooting down quadcopters from short range at this output… laser weapons have their challenges and limitations, like dust, weather conditions and time it takes to heat up target until it is disabled, if it takes 5 seconds you need to hit the exact spot as the target moves very quickly and your platform also moves at the same time…
There is no problem generating the spot intensity with Dragonfire, 50kW was being generated over 5 years ago, perhaps to today it is more? The issue they had was the tracking and maintaining focus on the target. From what I understand this was solved two years ago. Where in subsequent trials Dragonfire did a number of successful firings against a multitude of target drones at various distances and conditions.
She is due to go into long term refit/re-certification – the removal of her CIWS is routine in that case.
I know. I was just adding a “What If”. It’s a pretty good guess that she might just be fitted with DF as well as or in the place of CIWS
QE really needed 4 CIWS to cover the 360 degrees, the article does mention 4.
See where I’m coming from ?
All for this.
However one major weakness of this weapon is that by the time you’re able to use it, the threat is already uncomfortably close to the ship – so it had better work well, or Phalanx will be throwing a lot more than toys out of it’s pram.
With current tech it will only be short ranged for the forseable future – think of it as another layer of CIWS.
Not sure that phalanx has any advantage on range does it ?
No, but Phalanx is better suited against a cruise missile. Where it can throw a wall of tungsten darts in the path of the approaching missile. I see Dragonfire, being initially concentrated on countering both airborne and surface drones. Until more confidence is built up against harder targets. Dragonfire brings the cost equation back in the ship’s favour. As the cost of firing is significantly cheaper than the drone.
Good grief. The RN are still acting like they have forever to sort out and test kit.
In my view they are going to need one or two of these on everything that floats not to mention protecting land based sites.
Great if this is just a test but perhaps we need a production run of about 4000 from the MOD for starters.
I’m wondering if two of those ships to be equipped with the Dragonfire system could be, the two carriers?
I wonder just how good it is at tracking and whether it could be used to dazzle at highly extended ranges.
The laser operates in the infrared spectrum, so is unlikely to be used against a human for dazzling (bearing in mind the legal practicalities). It could in theory be used against infrared sensors used for detection and tracking that aircraft, missiles etc use.
The MoD announced two years ago, that a major breakthrough had been made in Dragonfire’s ability to a track a target and keep the spot focused on a designated area of a target. I believe, this is a problem that all such laser based weapon systems face. One method to mitigate this is to make the spot greater in diameter, so the target faces an wider average spot intensity. But to do this, your laser will need a much higher power output, as you have to maintain a very high spot intensity to burn through the target, as the either spot moves around the designated target area or the optics can’t focus the spot small enough. Whereas a system like Dragonfire, can get away with a smaller power output, because the spot’s focused diameter is significantly smaller. Therefore there’s more energy packed into a smaller area.
Worth noting that the ‘Dazzlers’ previously employed by the RN weren’t targeted at the eyes. They were designed to make the cockpit canopy of an aircraft fluoresce. Essentially the ‘Dazzler’ interacted with all the microscopic cracks and dints in a canopy and caused it to reflect the light. The canopy glowed like a fluorescent lighting tube, preventing the pilot from seeing out. But not affecting their eyes…the result was the aircraft having to turn away or fly on, without vision, and potentially crash.