The UK DragonFire laser weapon remains on course for Royal Navy deployment by 2027, with ministers reiterating existing plans rather than announcing further acceleration.
Responding to a written question from Lord Spellar, Defence Minister Lord Coaker said the government is committed to advancing development, testing and integration of the system.
“The UK Government is committed to accelerating the development, testing, production, and installation of the DragonFire high energy laser system,” he said.
However, the timeline referenced reflects progress already in motion. A contract for the first two systems was awarded to MBDA in November 2025, with the first due to be installed on a Type 45 destroyer in 2027, five years earlier than originally planned.
Two major firing trials completed in 2025 have supported the system’s move towards operational capability, with the UK aiming to become the first European NATO nation to field a laser-directed energy weapon.
DragonFire is a British-developed laser directed-energy weapon being built by a consortium including MBDA UK, Leonardo UK, QinetiQ and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. First revealed publicly in 2017, the system has undergone a series of trials in the UK, including testing at the Hebrides range where it has tracked and engaged aerial targets. The weapon is designed to counter threats such as drones and mortar rounds, using a high-energy laser in the 50 kilowatt class, according to previously released information.
The system combines multiple glass-fibre lasers into a single beam and is mounted in a turret alongside tracking sensors, including an electro-optical camera. Trials have demonstrated a high degree of accuracy, with the Ministry of Defence previously stating the precision is comparable to hitting a small coin at a distance of one kilometre. Its range remains classified, though it is understood to operate as a line-of-sight system.
One of the key features highlighted by the Ministry of Defence is the comparatively low cost per shot, which has been described as around £10, significantly lower than conventional missile interceptors. As an electrically powered system, DragonFire also reduces reliance on stored munitions, which may have implications for sustained operations where resupply is constrained.
The programme has been brought forward from an earlier in-service date later in the decade, following successful trials and additional funding. Beyond its initial deployment at sea, the technology is also being explored for use on land platforms and potentially in the air domain.
Nice to see some positive news out of UK defence. Dragonfire could be a major win from both a defence and industrial aspect, if we can market it to our allies over potential US rivals
Let’s face it – there are a few war zones at the moment. If it shot down everything that came within range in one of those war zones firstly they would have proved their worth, secondly we could commit to installing them on every ship in the RN plus British bases world wide not to mention an excellent export market. We could be building and exporting them in their thousands.
We should have Dragonfire, Sky Sabre, and Rapid Sentry demonstrating their capabilities in all of the Gulf States we have friendly relationships with. Good way to notch-up foreign sales for GB Plc.
Sky sabre will be heading to Saudi apparently..
We will have essentially 3 systems deployed.. Falklands, Cyprus and Saudi..
And Rapid Sentry is in the zone too, may be a little early for Dragonfire mind but would be a great test zone if this mess goes endlessly.
Hope they’re planning on restocks of CAMM right now like with LMM to Ukraine.
Considering how ubiquitous CAMM and LMM are going to be you would hope that they are not only filling stocks up but widening the product lines..
There is also a huge opportunity to sell these missiles to the Middle East.. they have now seen the limitation of US golden bullets in a real war ( vast cost, limited supply, slow to restock and when the chips are down the US will just hoard for their own purposes, which is what they always do. because it’s what they did to the Gulf war 2 and Afghanistan.. as one senior RAF officer told me at a dinner party once.. we got told the kit would only come to us after the US forces were fully supplied).
Slightly off topic but Pete Hegseth just referred to the Royal Navy as “a big bad navy who can do this stuff as well” when referencing a naval operation to re open the straits of Hormuz.
Sounds like a TACO is coming with a declaration of victory from the Trump administration, apparently if countries don’t want to get their fuel from the gulf they can buy it from the USA so it’s a big “American victory” 😀
The UK is probably the only other country in the world capable of stitching together a coalition of countries to deploy a force in the region(which I guess is what Hegseth is referring to). A single UK T45 and the MCM drones is probably enough for us to get by on. Countries like South Korea, Japan, Australia, France and Germany can and should all contribute vessels.
It would be very useful to have separate Chinese and Indian naval operations in the straits as well. This is very similar to the operations the UK lead of the Somalia where China and India also made their own separate contributions.
I’m guessing we will need to lift what ever sanctions remain on Iranian oil from the UK and EU however the USA already seem to have defacto removed its sanctions.
Iranian hard liners will no doubt feel in boldened but just like with the Taliban they may rapidly find themselves in a civil war once the outside threat disappears. Their command structure survived by splitting the IRGC into 31 separate independent commands. After so many leaders were killed they may not all agree on who the new leader is.
I see a Kuwaiti tanker full of oil for China was hit today, probably not good tactics and PR for Iran but those local commanders probably don’t know much about what precisely they are hitting.
Hegseth was being sarcastic.
It does not really work when your own navy has essentially told you to “fuck off” we cannot do that.
With the ability to easily incorporate lasers and the addition of sea Ceptor, a limited land attack and first rate anti ship capability with NSM, the T45 is slowly becoming the fully capable destroyer we need.
Even the two onboard wildcats are now becoming important anti drone air warfare assets, maybe the best in the world. As long as it can be done without minimal impact on the warship production, I do think delaying the T83 as long as possible makes sense. Unlike the T42 which were largely useless on the day they were launched, the T45 still has a lot of capability. If more missiles and land attack capability is required this can easily be provided by something like a T91 sloop with 16 mk41.
We need to role out the Aster30 NT missile as soon as possible but once that’s done the T45 would seem to be the ideal platform for most air ware fare threats and with 80 missiles onboard (48 Aster, 24 CAMM, 8 NSM) that’s only 16 less than the Flight III Arleigh Burke.
It’s certainly nice to see.
On a side note the Type 42s were certainly very useful. A slightly larger platform with a short range/low altitude defence (e.g. the T43 design with sea wolf) would have been more flexible, but they were crucial in the Falklands with keeping enemy aircraft at low altitudes, especially as the RN in the 70s-80s was really poor on air defence for any other vessels.
My point on the T42 is it should never have gone to sea without sea wolf and phalanx. The Type 22 and Type 42 were being built at the same time. T42 was a dated design when being built, by the time it left service it was close to useless in its primary role.
Type 45 is very different. Lots of room for growth and a very capable radar arrangement with lots of electrical power for future growth.
The early Batch 1 and 2s I agree, the Batch 3 T42, might have been usefully upgraded. However, the Sea Dart certainly had a lot of life left in it. Sea Dart 2 looked plausible, plus included vertical launch. Pity it got no interest from the MOD. As the land based version with the bigger 1st stage booster, pegged to replace Bloodhound, would have been a very good system for the time, that included anti-SRBM capability.
Problem with Sea Dart VL was that it wouldn’t have fitted into Mk41 or anything else.
The next problem was that RN were jittery about finding the pennies for a missile development program as well as funding a radar CMS program. All of Slug, Dart, Wolf ran massively over budget.
A one for one replacement (or even 8-10) of T42 with no S1850, just SAMPSON and 32 Aster would have been interesting, would we be in a better place now?
To be honest a true AAW platform needs 2 radars.. otherwise you essentially overwhelm that one radar with divergent tasks that are a bit mutually exclusive.. essentially a radar cannot to long range volume track at the same time as high resolution tracking for the kill chain.. if you have one radar and you need to start tracking and killing things you will loss the wider picture. It’s fine for a frigate to loss the wider picture while it’s defending itself but the ship that’s in control of the task groups air defence, not so much.
T45 is large because one of the main things learned is that tightly sized ships are a nightmare to upgrade. Also because the hull is designed to support the SAMPSON radar mast.
I fear you might be a bit optimistic on the T45 radars. The S1850, effectively the original Smart-L, is now dated, and has been described by another NATO navy as “osolete”. The French, Italians, Dutch and Germans are all replacing theirs, with either the new Thales AESA version or other radars. The RN seem to be resigned to being left as the only operator. Sampson was indeed state of the art when it entered service, but without a very major upgrade is now unlikely to match the performance of the new generation AESA radars going onto the Fr/It Horizon ships or the German F127 (let alone the AB Flt3). Will this be in the DIP?
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T42 unfortunately was built to the most minimum price possible even to the extent of chopping x amount of feet off its design length thus reducing its seakeeping properties and I believe almost halving the projected Seadart loadout.
A lightweight sea wolf launcher was touted but I suppose if you don’t even want to fit 30mm on it…..
AA
Which was why Batch II & III get successively longer…
I wonder which Type 45 will get Dragonfire next year. I am assuming two units per ship – 1 each side?
Any idea where they will be located?