The Ministry of Defence is inviting proposals from industry for the rapid delivery of vehicle-mounted laser weapons capable of shooting down drones at distances beyond one kilometre, as part of a new land-based counter-UAS initiative.
In a Preliminary Market Engagement Notice published on 13 June 2025, the MOD states it is seeking to understand “the current maturity in the application of Laser Directed Energy Weapon (LDEW) technology” against the growing threat posed by small uncrewed air systems. The programme is being led by Defence Equipment and Support.
The notice outlines specific expectations for interested suppliers. The MOD is seeking a “LDEW system (effector, power, cooling, sensor) to destroy small UAS at ranges of 1km+”, adding that “availability to deliver within 12 months ideally” will be required. The system must also be “hosted on a land vehicle platform” and include “UK system content to be declared – 50% by value and above expected.”
A total of up to £20 million is available for the acquisition of multiple systems. The government also explicitly welcomes “collaboration between industry partners to form a solution.”
Suppliers will be expected to demonstrate the capability of their systems in live conditions. The MOD confirms that “testing range/facilities to be provided by government, as a demonstration of systems would be required as part of any procurement.”
The language used in the request is deliberately broad, with the MOD noting: “The description is deliberately high level and outcome based, so as not to unduly limit the use cases or technologies to which responses might refer.” The goal is to “understand the current maturity, performance, cost, and availability of LDEW systems to be operated in counter UAS roles.”
The market engagement process will run until 11 July 2025. The MOD plans to hold one-to-one sessions with suppliers who hold appropriate security clearance between 16 June and 11 July. A wider industry engagement day may also be arranged depending on the level of response.
Contracts, if awarded, would run from 1 August 2025 to 31 March 2026.
This new drive follows a successful British Army test in October 2024, when a High Energy Laser demonstrator was fired from an armoured Wolfhound vehicle for the first time. The system, developed by Team Hersa, a partnership between Defence Equipment & Support, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), and a Raytheon UK-led industry team, successfully destroyed hovering drones at Radnor Range in mid-Wales. Soldiers from 16 Regiment Royal Artillery conducted the live-fire user experimentation.
Good start but as with every thing lots of talk, wants and needs but no orders. Any of the wise men/women on here know when we might see any orders from the SDR? a lot asked for hinted at but nothing yet
Needs more money and your fave government hasn’t supplied any.
not my fave any thing, bunch leftie c**ts but better at defence than the last lot who hollowed it out and hid the fact
Autumn, in the defence white paper.
Thank you,
If I was in command of a vehicle with a directed energy weapon I would be tempted to shout “Phasers, fire!” every few seconds. And yes, I realise a phaser is a particle beam not a laser. Speaking of which, when are we gonna get particle weapons?
I believe that it will be around the time we get the mechanised mobile infantry suits (as per the Starship Troopers book).
We won’t need either Boxers or Ajax (or Challengers 3 even) from that point onwards!
I thought they already had that. Wasn’t the Raytheon, Wolfhound-mounted laser successfully tested last year? So what’s with the whole invitation for proposals? We just spent £17m developing the capability. Buy it, field it, report on it and iterate it!
This feels like just another reason not to make something operational, ensuring there’s further delay and no proper feedback from the troops who might use it.
just dragging out out via smoke and mirrors with out buying any thing, makes look like they doing some thing when its all just a talking shop and wish list.
Wasn’t Raytheon a partiularly large system – for mounting on t45 and semi-static land based, requiring very large power units and cooling, so far too heavy for agile vehicles. This one sounds like it might be for compact ones you can mount on a 4×4, but still achieving 1km+ range. That was my impression reading anyway
It does sound impressive, a more compact system with a range of 1km+. The engineering behind this kind of equipment is developing very quickly even if it still appears quite a way off from full maturity. So, for the foreseeable future, smallish batches and incremental iteration will be the order of the day.
We have to be careful not to be too impatient with procuring these nascent technologies: if we buy too much and too quickly, we run the risk of wasting a ton of money on stuff that will be already out of date a month or so after it’s been delivered.
Investing to scale up manufacturing established low tech stuff like shells and gun barrels makes perfect sense. Same goes for established high-tech munitions like Sea Ceptor and Sea Viper.
Brand new, still being developed, technologies, not so much. Pretty obvious that you should take a different approach in this case when you think about it for longer than a nano-second.