The government has said it is committed to accelerating the development and deployment of directed energy weapons to counter low-cost drones.
The commitment was set out by the Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence, Lord Coaker, in response to a written question from the Labour peer Lord Spellar, who had asked when directed energy weapons designed to combat low-cost drones would be available to the UK armed forces.
Coaker said the government was “committed to accelerating the development and deployment of directed energy weapons” to counter low-cost drones, describing the United Kingdom as “a world leader” in research on high-energy lasers and radio frequency weapons, working with key allies who share its aims in the field.
Directed energy weapons have become one of the most sought-after answers to the drone problem, offering a way to engage targets at the speed of light at a cost per shot measured in pounds rather than the hundreds of thousands of pounds that conventional interceptor missiles can cost, an economics that has become central to the search for affordable defences against the mass drone attacks now seen in Ukraine and increasingly threatening warships, bases and land forces well beyond it.
As a concrete marker of that effort, Coaker pointed to DragonFire, the British-developed high-energy laser, the first example of which is due to be installed on a Type 45 destroyer in 2027, “five years ahead of the original plan”, a deployment he said would make the United Kingdom “the first European NATO nation to operationally deploy advanced laser directed energy technology”. While that first system will go to sea, directed energy is being pursued across the armed forces, the technology equally relevant to protecting land forces and fixed sites from the same cheap drones.
The stated commitment to accelerate directed energy also sits alongside a separate effort, widely reported by this website and others, to speed up the protection of Royal Navy warships against drones, two distinct strands that together point to a push to close the gap between the threat now posed by cheap unmanned systems and the defences currently fielded to meet it.
Will believe it when it is fitted and working. I really hope so however.
Nice if something goes right.
Ah but they’ve committed to it, which means wait five years then fit every ship in the last week.
The army are most at risk from these drones. Some kind of vehical mounted High Energy Laser System needs producing.
committed to accelerating the development and deployment of directed energy weapons to counter low-cost drones., thats means some time this centry, what a true government stsatemeant conforming nothing,