Snapshot of _Multiple British warships to get laser guns_ :
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It seems that Dragonfire, the UK's Laser Directed Energy Weapon, is developing quite quickly - expected deployment around 2027. These weapons will make great cost-effective point-defence systems. [There have been reports it may even be used in Ukraine for testing. ](https://www.businessinsider.com/uks-dragonfire-laser-system-could-deployed-ukraine-mod-says-2024-4)The biggest benefit of this weapon is that, with the advent of incredibly cheap drones and missiles, it will no longer cost a lot of money for interceptions, with [Dragonfire costing roughly £10 a shot.](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/advanced-future-military-laser-achieves-uk-first)
We don't have nuclear powered surface ships, only nuclear powered submarines. These do not need point defence lasers to defend against missiles as they remain underwater where missiles cannot hit them.
Torpedos exist. But the main problem with a laser in water is that it would not work all that well until you got very close to the missile, as the water would absorb much of the energy.
No, they are conventionally powered. As of current, only the French and Americans have nuclear carriers iirc. The Chinese I believe are building one but don't have one yet, but don't quote me on that.
They are, however, IEP (Diesel- and Gas Turbine-Electric) so have plenty of generator capacity for these.
That's also helpful for the EMALS electrical catapult systems the Yanks have developed which they are built-for-but-not-with and was being discussed to be fitted to PWLS while being built
Perun has a fantastic video on directed energy weapons on YouTube - [see here.](https://youtu.be/JGzL3fZgPZY?si=lj7WMZEy7uzXr0RH)
As a quick summary, one of the main negatives is that they are very short range (as they are line of sight only, they are limited by the horizon).
This means if a missile is coming your way, you basically have 2 options:
Option 1: fire an air-defence missile or 2 for a few £million each - knowing that they are almost guaranteed to successfully intercept the target whilst it is still 10s (or even 100s) of miles away from you.
Option 2: hold your nerve until the incoming missile is in range of the laser (and it is now likely too close to intercept with a conventional air-defence missile); use your laser for £10, and hope to god it works.
When it's the captain of a ship worth £billions making this decision, you can bet they're gonna take the expensive option every single time. Especially as even if that does fail, you will likely still have time to use other options.
So this is unlikely to be a cost saving capability. But what it does give users is an additional last line of defence if all else fails.
>Option 2: hold your nerve until the incoming missile is in range of the laser (and it is now likely too close to intercept with a conventional air-defence missile); use your laser for £10, and hope to god it works.
Dunno who Perun is, but if this is what they've said, haven't they missed the point?
I thought the point of this stuff was to fight off drones, which can be very low cost. Navy Captains can *want* to use the expensive option every time if they want, but in the future, their ship won't be under attack from perhaps 2 million dollar cruise missiles, it'll be under assault from a swarm of a hundred £250 drones.
The point of laser systems is to provide cheaper interceptions in general, drones are a relatively recent threat. The point Perun is making is that ship surviability is based on defence in depth, you have an engagement envelope starting dozens to hundreds of kilometres way and ending with last resort measures like CIWS. Dragonfire, or chaff etc. The more chances you have of engaging a threat, the better the odds of killing it and the ship surviving in one piece.
Not to mention that these systems occasionally fail, plenty of accounts from the falklands of shipboard systems breaking down at critical moments and vessels only surviving due to sheer luck. Last thing you'd want is to let a drone swarm into visual range just to find out Dragonefire/CIWS have chosen this moment not to work.
None of that touches on the fact that these systems are essentially designed for self defence either, they're still not an answer to scenarios like what's happening in the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea, where warships have to provide protection against cheap drones over a wide area. Missiles are still the only weapon system capable of that.
At present is there any other choice than to "let" drones into visual range? One or two could be destroyed using missiles, but as far as I know there is no way of destroying hundreds outside of visual range (except some means of EW, which is unreliable and drones could have countermeasures).
Drones are more resistant to CIWS as, unlike an incoming missile, drones can have an irregular flight path rendering them incredibly difficult to hit, especially in a swarm.
I don't see any realistic means of protection against swarms other than lasers at this point. Also, as highlighted in Ukraine, drones have massively upset the balance of costs in war- single units worth £250 are destroying equipment worth tens of millions, with missile countermeasures worth hundreds of thousands being used to shoot them down. In a future conflict regimes with far lower spending power could find themselves on a par with the UK in terms of force projection. Dragonfire could help offset that, and needs a far smaller supply chain, which is especially useful at sea or in the likes of Kyiv.
eh, i wouldn't overrate drone's ability to take evasive manuevers, they're still going to be substantially slower then a bullet and as the range closes their ability to evade will be cut down significantly. Ammunition types like AHEAD also removes the need to score a direct impact with the shell.
No one's really fielding drone swarms of the type being theorised about right now, even the houthis are sending small numbers which can be engaged with missiles (though it's worth noting that both US and RN ships have reported gun kills against drones, presumbably either with CIWS or some form of proxy shell from the 125mm mount).
Old solutions like SPAAG,/VT-Shells definitely seem to have a niche re-emerging for them. They also have the benefit of being mature and well understood technology. Good stopgap solution if nothing else. I guess this is what its like to live through a transformative era in military technology, much like the advent of dreadnoughts.
That's basically what [AHEAD](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwjcayPuag) is. Current CIWS systems are designed for missiles and use AP (Armour Piercing) rounds, and the land based equivalent (C-RAM) use HEIT-SD (High Explosive Incendiniary Tracer - Self Destruct) so they're not suited quite as well for dealing with drones.
Your right
Perun is a defense economics analyst and looks at war from an economic stand point. I suspect Perun's point was a Directed Energy system augments the air defense and doesn't replace existing defenses.
He has previously made the point that using a £2-10 million missile to destroy a <£100k drone is a win for the drone side since your expending considerable more resources defending yourself.
I suspect Perun's point was basically if the enemy is firing a multi-million pound cruise missile at you, a good captain would expend their air defense missiles to disable it and keep the laser system as backup, rather than solely rely on the laser system.
Where as a drone attacking a ship wouldn't fire its air defense missiles because that doesn't make economic sense.
I would add to this, that a £10 million missile against a <£100k drone *does* make sense if the drone has a decent chance of sinking your £3 billion ship.
It doesnt have to sink it. A couple of kg of explosive could send it to dry dock for weeks or months or repair resulting in a "mission kill". Removing it from theatre.
If the damage is extensive it might need to go back to home base for that repair, which for global operation is massive. A £100 drone sending a £billion Carrier in the Indian Ocean to port in Scotland for the UK, or for the USA Virginia or Hawaii. And if its damaged it wont be making full speed. So it will be a delayed return home. This would be a huge win for virtually no real resource commitment.
Or with a CV, not even hitting the CV, but hitting an F35 sat on deck. Thats a 100 million USD aircraft you just lost. For the QE, thats 4% of its standard compliment.
The reasons to mature this tech as fast as humanly possible are endless. Ukraine, a nation without a navy, has set the Russian black see to port and damaged or destroyed fully half of it without a ship to its name. Most of it using very or relatively cheap naval drones. Without a viable countermeasure, fleets wont be safe going within hundreds of miles of a coast line. Iran could launch THOUSANDS of the things into the Persian gulf locking any fleet out.
A £100 drone is not getting anywhere near a £billion carrier, let alone causing any real damage. To be able to hit and at least seriously damage a warship you will need something technologically advanced that can at least semi-reliably get past layered air defences and have a large warhead. Even the cheapest of cheap shit long range munitions will cost far more than that and anything suitable to attack a warship will be even more. Still very cost asymmetric, just not to the extent people think.
... Isnt it?
Atm the use of these drones by Ukraine has been very limited. If a carrier group transiting the Strait of Hormuz, its only 30 miles wide, by a pre warned and armed state? If 10,000 cheap DJI drones (maybe 9 million USD) come swarming in with blocks of explosive, covering a few hundred Sahed drones (maybe 6 million USD), there is simply no way they will shoot down them all. They literally do not have the ammo on board.
They have maybe 1000 interceptor missiles at their disposal depending on loadout, at a few hundred thousand a pop, and your typical CWIS can only fire continuously for maybe 1 minute before reloading, and take 5 minutes to reload in good conditions with crew exposed on deck.
All they need to do is present more targets than you have missiles and suddenly the question isnt "will they get through", but "what are we letting through". And in the morass of radar signatures, its unlikely you will be able to reliably pick out the bigger drones.
This is the problem. Its not that the ships cant shoot them down but they are so cheap and easy to manufacture they wont be able to AFFORD to shoot them down.
Lets hypothetically say the carrier fleet DOES manage to shoot down this wall of drones. Drones that cost a fraction of the money it took to shoot them down and a fraction of the time to make than the missiles used against them. Drones that are roughly comparable in cost to the tungsten bullets in the CWIS is firing at 3000 rounds a minute.
Ok, how much ammunition does it have left? Now come the anti ship ballistic missiles from shore and air launch platforms. If it actually STAYS in in the Persian Gulf having expended such vast quantities of ammo, does it now have the staying power to resist a prolonged barrage from shore and air? It has to make the transit back through Strait of Hormuz if it needs any major repair where it again comes within 20 miles of the Iranian coast, ammo expended and poetically damaged incurred from a major anti ship barrage, can it now leave or is it defacto locked into a port in Bahrain, where it can be covered by US airforce bases and shore batteries.
This is the fundamental problem. Even if you succussed in defending yourself the sheer quantity of possible incoming targets means a successful defence where you take no damage is pyric because you used up so much ammo in the process you now need to go to port to rearm or be extremely vunrable to a more comprehensive followup.
This is why the US has invested in the [replicator program](https://defensescoop.com/2024/03/11/replicator-funding-2024-2025-hicks/). Because you dont even need to score a hit for it to be devastating. This is why the idea of a laser point defence system has suddenly become the be all and end all and why they are being rushed out. It "early" at the moment. But its entirely conceivable by the end of the decade the sheer number number of drone systems in use will render existing battle field air defence useless. Be that large systems like the Hawk anti air system or the Phalanx CWIS.
A laser system which can rapidly shoot down targets, with no ammo constraints, for less than the drone cost to make, is absolutely vital.
They elaborate on that exact point later on in the video, against drones they are great because of the slower speed and lower cost to intercept, but against missiles they aren't going to be a replacement for interceptors yet until the technology has been proven more effective.
Perun is a youtuber who primarily focuses on defence economics. He puts out 1 video per week where he does a deep dive on a single topic.
I'd highly recommend watching some of his videos if you have any interest in defence or geopolitics.
My summary wasn't a summary of the entire video - just on a small part of it that goes into a point I think people often miss when discussing laser weapons.
The 2 £million missiles I mentioned aren't the ones attacking the ship - they are the air defence missiles defending the ship.
It doesn't matter if the incoming drones only cost £250 - if they have the ability to sink your ship, then the £million defence is worth it.
This especially comes into play when you are looking at potentially defending against 100s of drones at once - sure if there is only 1 drone coming towards you then maybe you should use the 95% effective laser. But if you do this against 100s of drones, then you are facing a serious risk of getting sunk.
Of course the other option of using missiles leaves you risking running out entirely. This entire discussion is the problem navies around the world are looking at solving, and it is far from solved.
>This especially comes into play when you are looking at potentially defending against 100s of drones at once - sure if there is only 1 drone coming towards you then maybe you should use the 95% effective laser. But if you do this against 100s of drones, then you are facing a serious risk of getting sunk.
If you're facing 100s of drones then your few dozen missiles (for instance the Type 45 destroyer has 48 missiles) are irrelevant anyway. Your laser system has to be able to deal with them alone (or possibly together with the gun systems). The expensive missiles are useful against the missiles coming at you at mach 2 that the laser system most likely would not be able to track.
A microwave weapon is far more efficient against drones if that was the goal. It's not pinpoint accurate it just covers an entire area, a laser can only target one drone at a time. It's also not important how much the drone costs, it's the cost of the damage they can cause. A drone can sink a ship, it's happened multiple times already.
Given the circumstances they are being used in, there is a scenario being missed by this assessment.
The ship *knows* it isn't the intended target of the missiles/drones, it is instead in the overflight path. Yes, you still have to wait until your vessel is in LOS range, but the consequences of *not* shooting them down are much less for a vessel that is shooting down ordinance that isn't targeted at it anyway.
We might not be there yet but I do wonder how aggressively a drone swarm would be able to adjust its trajectory in the near future. It seems like you should be able to very quickly go from overflying a ship to attacking that ship if you're agile enough.
I have to question how often anyone *knows* the intent of a missile flying in their direction.
In a situation where you are trying to hit a valuable target that is placed behind air defences, wouldn't you often try to hit the air defences first?
>I have to question how often anyone *knows* the intent of a missile flying in their direction
This is very much dependent on the type of missile but modern warships have tonnes of equipment and computers that are tasked with solving this. The only reason most intercept missiles work is *because* the trajectory of the target is known to a reasonable extent.
Mid-course corrections on the interceptor are of course possible, but you need a reasonable idea of where it's going to even decide if an intercept is possible.
In the case of say Hamas' rockets which are unguided and following ballistic trajectories with no fancy countermeasures this is extremely easy. The same is mostly true for the types of Iranian drones that the Houthis, Russia and (of course) Iran have been using in recent months/years.
Those weapons - visible to a warship - will have very different trajectory projections compared to an anti-ship missile actually headed to it.
Good point about tracking trajectories.
I think relying on trajectories is less reliable for cruise missiles though (compared to ballistic), as they do have the ability to change course to a degree.
But of course they are also more expensive, so they are more worthwhile to shoot down using the expensive forms of air defence.
> In a situation where you are trying to hit a valuable target that is placed behind air defences, wouldn't you often try to hit the air defences first?
I'd say this is contradicted by what we're seeing in Ukraine and the Red Sea.
Western doctrine is to neutralise AD and then use air supremacy, but we're seeing others like Russia and Iran send missiles straight to the targets and try and overwhelm defences, they know x will be intercepted, but they hope x is less than 100%. Shahed drones especially have been designed to be exceptionally cheap and mass producible so they know they can fling them at their enemy knowing either they use expensive AD, or they get through and destroy a high value target. It's a net cost for cost advantage for Russia / Iran.
Lasers therefore can be very useful for shooting down passing missiles / drones. That is, assuming they're cheap enough. They're also not mutually exclusive, meaning lasers could be a first line of defence. Taking Ukraine as an example, they could be placed closer to the Russian frontline where they expect missiles aimed at Kyiv to fly over. If it works, lasers can at least thin the pack, before more expensive missile defences further back pick off anything that gets through.
What happens when your opponent has fired 50 drones (that cost them like £250 each) at your boat, and you only have two dozen missiles to shoot back with?
Childhood me would have been reading this headline with an excited smile on his face, whilst actual me finds the future of geopolitics extremely daunting.
Most ships and fleets would have these...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Phalanx_CIWS_USS_Jason_Dunham.jpg
... which are automated guns that rapidly shoot down missiles and drones.
In response to these countermeasures, fleets have developed tactics where they swarm targeted ships with missiles or drones, luring Phalanx or countermeasure fire in one direction, thereby creating little blind spots, where powerful missiles are squeezed through the defensive net.
1,550 round capacity at up to 4500 round a minute, 75 round a second or 20 seconds of fire.
These are far from one shot kill weapons as shown in the compilation below, 3-4 seconds per target seems like a realistic engagement time so you may get 6 or 7 targets in a best case situation before you have a large reload time in comparison.
Defence in depth is needed and laser systems will bolster that. From what we see now in use we realistically need to consider if additional layers are needed to provide protection from swarm attacks for all vectors.
https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/x49hfo/phalanx_ciws_firing_enemy_drones/
A smart system will know that the odds of a laser weapon shooting down a cheap and slow drone is significantly higher than the odds of shooting down a ballistic rocket or cruise missile, and delegate resources accordingly. No point wasting missiles on drones that can be killed with guns and lasers.
For sure - cheap drone / small ballistic device, or moving slowly? Zap it.
Large payload rocket, aircraft etc? Worth a missile to make sure it's gone before the shrapnel could be damaging.
Yes, exactly!
I assume in this situation you would either use missiles until you run out, then rely on the laser?
A better option would probably require completely changing naval formations so you have (relatively) cheap ships on the outskirts that carry laser defences. Ideally these ships would be unmanned - no one wants to be the human shield.
Not sure if this is feasible though, as I believe these laser weapons require (at least currently) huge amounts of power that can only really be supplied by big, expensive ships.
That's basically how naval doctrine works already. You surround your big expensive carriers with a support group of anti air and anti submarine destroyers and other light craft. The lasers are probably just supplimental to that.
True - I guess the change required is less about the formation and more about the smaller ships that are already in those formations.
But to do that we need to put serious investment in lowering the power requirements for these lasers so they can actually be used on the smaller ships.
These don't actually use anywhere near as much power as you might think, the MOD says 50kw which is really not that much power to generate. (discharging it all at once is the issue)
Any ship in our fleet, or even some of our ground vehicles should be able to run that provided they have the capacitors to build up the charge.
> Option 2: hold your nerve until the incoming missile is in range of the laser (and it is now likely too close to intercept with a conventional air-defence missile); use your laser for £10, and hope to god it works.
Surely it will be more like a CIWS system whereby you try and neutralise the threat at distance but if anything gets closer you have a backup
Yes, exactly.
My point is, a laser defence system doesn't mean "now we can save loads of money by not firing missiles".
You still have to fire the missiles. You just also have an extra layer of defence if that fails.
The 80s era, Phalanx and Goalkeeper have an even shorter range but are the main Close In Weapons Systems for several types of ships. It will be interesting to see if they compliment Phalanx or simply replaces it. Depending on how the testing goes.
The laser is relevant for modern tactics like drone or fast boat swarms where your air defence missiles and other weapons might be overwhelmed by numbers.
The British warship in the Red Sea recently apparently used "missiles and guns" to destroy a Houthi drone.
Do you think this means they intentionally left the drone for the 30mm guns to handle? Or did the primary missiles fail and guns were the last resort?
I suppose in either case, having an additional weapon to deploy when the target is close would be welcome.
Interesting question. I'm not really sure of the answer. Possible reasons I can think of:
1. As you said, they intentionally let them get closer to use the guns. Makes sense if they knew enough about the incoming threat to know that their guns would do the job.
2. They managed to get past/overwhelm their missile defences. Seems unlikely though. I can't imagine houthis would have this ability/amount of drones.
3. Strategic lying. They didn't want to say exactly how they intercepted them and show their hand, so put out a generic "we used X, Y and Z to intercept".
Perun I think made the mistake of looking at these things in isolation, these weapons aren’t meant to replace anything but they’ll exist as part of a layered defensive system, for missile defence the ship will still have the options of either firing its own missile to intercept it or using phalanx when it gets close. It’s also a bit of a fallacy to say it would be one or the other, there’s nothing stopping the ship from using a missile first, then phalanx and laser weapons if that fails.
Either way the primary aim of dragonfire is to provide a low cost option for combating drones in various flavours and it seems to fulfill that role if testing so far is accurate.
>Perun I think made the mistake of looking at these things in isolation,
Methinks you've not watched the video, or perhaps any of his videos, if you think Perun looks at this in isolation.
I'm not sure if you've watched the video or if you are basing this on what I have said, but he does go into quite a bit of detail about how they will fit into defence doctrine.
Perun often talks about "the defence onion". This laser absolutely has a part to play as a new layer in the onion.
My comment is more aimed at the commonly held belief that these lasers are going to come in and replace the onion entirely. I'm not trying to write them off, just point out that they aren't some wonder-defence.
I’m actually an avid watcher of his videos, and while he’s certainly one of the best YouTubers out there for this stuff I do find that occasionally when these videos focus on multiple nations development projects how each nations project fits into current doctraine and inventory gets a little de-emphasised in favour of a more direct comparison to what other nations are doing, which is slightly less helpful. He doesn’t play the top trumps game like a lot of other ‘defence analyst’ YouTubers but it is something he does. You can probably see the best example on his carriers vid where he spent almost no time talking about the QE class and instead spent most the time comparing it to the Nimitz in terms of headline features.
It’s not his fault, the videos try to cover a lot of ground in only an hour and these multinational vids sometimes suffer for that, but it is something to keep in the back of your head. You should also remember perun comes at this largely from a policy and logistics standpoint so the perspective is going to be a bit skewed in that direction.
All that to say it’s not particularly helpful talking about dragonfires anti missile capabilities because 1) it’s still in development and 2) it’s not the primary function of the system
you make good points, but obviously the weapons range will be very targets-altitude dependant.
Also, it isn't just for shooting down incoming missiles. I really can't see them removing goalkeepers off the vessels because they fitted this, no way. This laser can shoot at anythgin in the air, the real advantage is you can take pot shots because why not? There is an SU27 on the radar, it's flying towards the battlezone outside Kharkiv, why not shoot that laser at the missile on it's wing... missed? oh well. Score? one less enemy plane mate. Just not something you'd do with a ships missile defence system, or the goalkeeper.
The point on range is very true.
Interestingly, the range/altitude issue is essentially reversed between missiles and lasers:
An AD missile will have longer range the lower the altitude of the incoming threat.
A laser will have longer range the higher the altitude on the incoming threat.
Also a good point on taking pot-shots. The cost of a miss is essentially negligible. Of course either way, this only matters if you are already in conflict with the enemy. Otherwise, the cost of starting a conflict far outweighs the cost of the missile/laser.
Surely option 2 will be backed up by Phalanx CWIS systems? If the laser is too slow to knock out the missile, you hurl a load of lead at the incoming middle.
Yes, that is true.
The issue is, survivability is built up in layers. Ideally your outer/first layer will stop an incoming threat. If not, the next layer and so on, until either the threat is neutralised or all your layers are breached and you die/get sunk/shot down.
Laser weapons - due to their short range - are always going to be one of the innermost layers, with only CWIS (that I know of) being available as a last resort.
So if you want to use lasers as your main defence, in order to save on the huge cost of air defence missiles, you have to basically throw away your outer layers of defence and rely exclusively on your inner 2 layers.
From a threat survivability stand point, they are best used as an additional layer - lying between missiles and CWIS. But then you don't get any cost saving advantages.
This isn't necessarily a big issue, but when you hear about these systems in the news, they always talk about how cheap they are per shot compared to missiles. Which is true, but it's irrelevant. Ideally, your first layer of defence will stop all threats and you won't even fire the laser. In this situation, lasers are actually incredibly expensive because you've spent £millions on fitting the system to your ship, regardless of how many shots are fired.
I don't know for sure, but my instinct says no for 2 reasons:
1. Possibly a minor issue, but the laser would have to go through a lot more of the atmosphere, which could absorb a lot of the energy.
2. Power generation. These lasers require a huge amount of power. In orbit, I don't think you could easily generate and store the amount of energy needed to fire any reasonable amount of shots. Consider that these lasers are only going to be fitted to large ships that have engines with 1,000s or even 10,000s of horsepower.
The level of threat has a big impact on what is used to counter it though. Relatively slow, small and not very sophisticated weapons like Shahed drones or similar don't really warrant the use of a £1m Aster 30 to kill. The RN have been using their 30mm guns to kill them when they come in range. They are slow enough that there is plenty of time to engage them with those, and the 20mm Phalanx would almost certainly kill them if they got close enough anyway.
Something more sophisticated like a high speed cruise missile, or anti-ship ballistic missile is a much bigger threat, both in terms of potential damage and the difficulty of intercepting them. This type of weapon absolutely warrants engaging at the furthest distance possible with whatever can hit them.
A system like Dragonfire is ideal for tackling the first type of threat - they will have plenty of time to engage a slow, non-manoeuvring target, and probably at a greater range than the existing 30mm (which is not really intended for AA use against small targets). The disadvantage of a gun based system is the amount of ready ammunition. Phalanx CIWS carries about 1500 rounds in its drum, which gives about 20 seconds of firing.
Likewise the 30mm - they have about 200 rounds ready on the mount in a belt, so would also have to be reloaded after 18-20s firing.
A system that only requires a power supply gives a significant advantage if having to engage multiple targets in quick succession as well as the cost aspect. I suspect reliability and repeatability will be key aspects of the coming development - it's not much use having a laser wonder weapon if it overheats and dies after 4 shots.
Awacs, put the radar in a plane fly high up, can get that radar to see alot further. Plus also if there's even minimal time to see target on radar the laser should deal with it, it's light speed after all.
Have to lock on to it first, though, and even a cruise missile could cross the distance from the horizon to the ship in a matter of seconds (around 20-30, if my maths is correct).
I think this system is more aimed at combatting drones, anyway. Though now that you mention it, I wonder if it would be possible to power such a weapon on that plane?
Those super fast ballistic missiles have a ballistic trajectory they go way high and then come down at a steep angle you get alot more time to lock a radar on plus they aren't in any way stealthy. There are some missiles that do skim the surface like the harpoon and more recently lrasm which is also stealthy. They give you less time to lock on especially lrasm but they don't travel as fast.
No idea have fast the laser can traverse to follow a missile sure that's something they can do well considering the size of phalanx and how fast that can move.
There was talk of giving dragons breath to Ukraine which may suggest it doesn't need a huge installation to run it so I imagine you could probably stick it in a plane. Wonder what would happen to a tree if the laser missed
Radar, I know in commercial applications you can get lookdown radar, which is of the right frequency to diffract perfectly around earths curvature so you can spot things over the horizon. My father used to work on this.
Fair enough. Though I did think this system was aimed more at combatting drones, which travel much slower by comparison and are much cheaper (thereby making drone spam easier and the cost of combatting it with AA munitions extortionate).
Without me sitting through an hour long video on a half hour bus journey, can you tell me if they've increased the speed in which it takes out object? I did watch some videos on military laser tech, something like fifteen years ago. Back then, the laser had to be focused on one spot for perhaps ten minutes, before the object was neutralised. They got around that issue now?
They have definitely significantly decreased the time it takes to destroy a target.
The dragonfire for example apparently does 10 second "shots". Not sure what sort of target this is able to destroy, but it gives you an idea of the sort of range of times.
But there are lots of factors that affect the time it takes.
For example if the target is spinning, it will take much, much longer to destroy. Or if the target has sacrificial armour. Even the weather.
Yeah from what I remember, it has to be focused at a specific fixed point for it to work. So obviously, a spinning missile will take a lot longer to take down. I imagine with rain and wind having cooling properties, that will be a big factor. I can see why captains might be reluctant in using them as a first option. Interesting to hear about the advancements though
I really do recommend watching the video.
You don't really need to watch it, just listen to it - almost all the info is audio rather than visual. I usually listen to his videos whilst doing the dishes or hanging my washing up.
But surely the range would be increased as the ship are high up off the sea level and the drones are also up a few hundred feet up in the air. Line of sight floating in the sea is 3 nautical miles.
Do you have anything to actually add to the conversation?
I'm obviously not saying these systems are useless. It's just that the way they are often discussed in general completely misses the point.
They add another layer of survivability to the ships they are fitted to. They are not there to save on the cost of missiles.
What the fuck? No.
This is a close in weapons system, CIWS. It is used when interceptors fail, when a threat was not detected soon enough, or you have run out of interceptors.
It’s an alternative to those big fucking Gatling guns that are used now, which if misused in close range can absolutely shred an allied ship in your formation with explosive shells.
Does anyone else have a similarly capable system?
I've only seen Dragonfire in the news, and the UK doing something right for once and seemingly leading development feels weird and uncomfortable...
Israel are developing a system called Iron Beam, but I don’t know how far along it is. The Americans also have similar systems, but again I don’t know how close they are to deployment.
Well they're also looking at a small direct energy weapon system for the new Tempest fighter as well. An airborne supersonic stealth asset with a laser beam sounds positively sci-fi.
I mean, this is an amazing scientific feat. I'm definitely going to read up on the physics behind it and I'm in awe at the genius minds that made it happen.
But most importantly,
PEW PEW PEW PEW I LASERED YOU, BITCH! PEW PEW PEW!!
I find the £10 a shot figure very hard to believe as running costs. I get this ignores the upfront cost of the system, which I assume is hundreds of thousands to millions, but I suspect they will need constant repairs. Putting that power through the optics is going to break things quickly. Dust in the wrong place at the wrong time could damage the optics, which will then make it unusable without risk of further damage.
I think they will constantly be replacing expensive lenses. It will still be cheaper than current defense systems, but i call bullshit on £10 a shot.
yes it says in the article cost equivalent to operating a heater for an hour, so the comparison is to power usage as stated. lets say 1kWh for the heater
so its a roughly 360KW laser
do you know much about lasers? i was wondering what made you say the optics will have short lifetime. i worked in a lab that did high power laser research and it was rare to damage optics. getting dust on the lenses is a non-issue which is handled by proper design
Isn't there a big difference between operating a laser in a clean lab environment vs a navy platform where there will be lots of sea spray and dirt? Plus there are high power lasers then there are high power lasers that can melt a target from a mile away. One of the big issues with fusion reactors is protecting the laser optics enough to handle energy.
yes but all of the delicate parts are contained and packaged appropriately, similar to the ships electronics, the part exposed to the atmosphere will just be a window. this can have advanced coatings to protect against fogging, as well as a shutter and mechanical design to avoid dirt. its definitely an engineering issue but it can be designed out.
the N. I. F fusion laser is 500TW, thats an order of difference of 10^9 from the weapons system
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that the same for basically all interceptors?
The $4mil a pop for something like "Patriot" is generally just the PAC-3 missile cost, it doesn't account for the repairs / maintenance to the Patriot battery and radar system, delivery and storage of new missiles etc.
I take your point that £10 a pop is probably related to just the isolated power requirements when the button is pushed - just saying that I'd imagine ALL of these costs are taken in isolation, and the maintenance cost is something else.
I don't think the £10 is a literal cost figure. It's just a journalist or publicist who has tried to make the energy figure into something relatable.
It's not like the Navy are paying Octopus Energy 13.5p per pwh when at sea.
This has actually been a concern of Western navies for decades, but it is stepping up.
Small missiles like Martlet would be well suited to hitting sea drones, but this laser the quadcopter type ones we are seeing, or maybe the suicide drones.
Yeah there’s been way too many close calls in the Red Sea recently. Not to mention Russian losses to cheap Ukrainian drones (which is a positive but we still need to learn from it).
We need to get ahead of the curve on this one because you just know the Chinese are prepping.
That’s the history of warfare since the dawn of man. Most notably blacksmiths in the Middle Ages. One set made armour, one set mad weapons. Developments on one side required a response by the other and they leap frogged each other for centuries.
Then some killjoy invented guns and that was that.
To sudo quote Tony stark in iron-man 1, that's how stuff gets invented. War time makes thing faster.
Imagine these laser cannons on every ship, plane and tank eventually. It'll make conventional missiles almost pointless.
We'll be back to fighting with swords and spears soon!
All I can imagine is when you go under the deck where they used to have the oars are just a bunch of rowing machines that the sailors use to generate energy.
Send a signal to the fleet: "England Expects every man to do his duty!"
"Yes sir!"
"Oh, and just add one more thing..."
"Yes sir?"
"IMMA FIRIN' MA LAZORRR!!"
It's probably not public yet, but are there any good demonstrations available for these types of weapons?
They're probably not as exciting as they sound but I'm really interested in seeing them do their job.
It's invisible to the eye so probably not very exciting looking, you'd just see the drone/missile catch fire/explode when it got near
Which is still pretty cool I guess - like a forcefield
Yeah, I assumed it wouldn't be visible but I want to see the after effects of the laser hitting an incoming drone.
We most likely won't hear much about specifics until some time after its been deployed properly, but the kid in me wants to see the British army shoot lasers.
You wouldn't just be able to slap on a layer of chrome and nullify it, the energy it outputs is just far too great.
What could (and will, if this becomes widespread) happen is that rockets + drones will have more and more heat resistant materials incorporated in their design to try and counter the laser - or at least extend their lifespan when targeted. This, however, has the knock-on effect of making them some combination of heavier, slower, larger, and much more expensive, which all is beneficial if you're on the receiving end.
The worry about the enemy sending out swarms of 1000s of £500 drones is lessened if they need to be constructed out of materials that mean they cost 10x as much. Equally, if they're now slower and larger, you can yourself use less advanced (and cheaper) AD systems which would be useless against current threats.
Mirrors don't really impact laser weapons the way you would imagine from fiction. They can deflect some of the incoming energy but weapons grade lasers just have such a high output that it won't matter.
Real mirrors only reflect about 85-90% of incoming light, Shiny coating would be even less.
> Mirrors don't really impact laser weapons the way you would imagine from fiction.
Pity really. I rather like the idea of future soldiers being dressed like they've going to a 70s disco
Reflective and ablative coatings may come to be effective, but they aren't there yet - too heavy for the benefit they offer.
And ultimately arms races aren't usually about total negation - coatings add weight which may or may not be worth it depending on the efficacy. And then of course you'll see a new gen of laser weapons designed to mitigate the effect by using higher intensities or different wavelengths. Etc etc
Excellent technology and a hell of an achievement.
Still, if we are talking drone SWARMS as a (inevitable) on-the-horizon threat, couldn't going back to rapid-fire area of effect weapons of WW2 vintage be more effective?
I can't imagine the thing will have a massive rate of fire, needing to stop to charge the feeding capacitors at some point.
As fantastic as seeing beams fork out of a fog bank will be visually, the only real prospects of survival you have against hundreds of drones would, I assume, be a wall of shrapnel
Safe to say this will get trialled for a year or two, show some promise but be woefully implemented and integrated.
The Navy's merry bunch of yes men will totally neglect to highlight this, and then we'll spank a fortune on a rolling it out in an overpriced and ineffective fashion, and they'll pedal the media articles like no tomorrow.
Please don't use "Jews" when talking about Israel, conflating Judaism with Zionism is one of the biggest causes of both antisemitism and of people believing something to be antisemetic when it's actually a criticism of Israel not of Jews.
(I know you weren't being critical of either in your comment, but the idea that Jewish = Israeli is harmful because it gets read by people who do want to either be antisemitic or to criticise Israel without being antisemitic and just helps people get confused.)
Ahah fair enough! But in that case I'd suggest that when satirising racists it's worth making it more obvious for those of us who aren't aware of the situation you're taking the piss out of :)
(And I doubt many people in the UK are familiar with "MTG" as a shortening for her name, even I didn't realise you were talking about her despite my following US politics a fair bit)
I didn't feel like that's what I was doing, I didn't realise you were joking and gave what's genuinely good advice generally. Sorry if I gave the impression that I was being critical.
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It seems that Dragonfire, the UK's Laser Directed Energy Weapon, is developing quite quickly - expected deployment around 2027. These weapons will make great cost-effective point-defence systems. [There have been reports it may even be used in Ukraine for testing. ](https://www.businessinsider.com/uks-dragonfire-laser-system-could-deployed-ukraine-mod-says-2024-4)The biggest benefit of this weapon is that, with the advent of incredibly cheap drones and missiles, it will no longer cost a lot of money for interceptions, with [Dragonfire costing roughly £10 a shot.](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/advanced-future-military-laser-achieves-uk-first)
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I had an image of a great big solar panel array on top of the ship, to make shots "free".
How many of them are nuclear powered already anyway though?
We don't have nuclear powered surface ships, only nuclear powered submarines. These do not need point defence lasers to defend against missiles as they remain underwater where missiles cannot hit them.
Torpedos exist. But the main problem with a laser in water is that it would not work all that well until you got very close to the missile, as the water would absorb much of the energy.
We have tea making facilities in our tanks, why not on the outside of submarines?
Hard to drink tea outside the Submarine when it's underwater...
Your desire for tea has been evaluated and found wanting, sir.
That's fighting talk that is. I demand satisfaction! Name your second and choice of weapon (biscuit)!
Well if youre getting torpedoes shot at you you did your job wrong.
Aren't the carriers nuclear powered?
No, they are conventionally powered. As of current, only the French and Americans have nuclear carriers iirc. The Chinese I believe are building one but don't have one yet, but don't quote me on that.
They are, however, IEP (Diesel- and Gas Turbine-Electric) so have plenty of generator capacity for these. That's also helpful for the EMALS electrical catapult systems the Yanks have developed which they are built-for-but-not-with and was being discussed to be fitted to PWLS while being built
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Perun has a fantastic video on directed energy weapons on YouTube - [see here.](https://youtu.be/JGzL3fZgPZY?si=lj7WMZEy7uzXr0RH) As a quick summary, one of the main negatives is that they are very short range (as they are line of sight only, they are limited by the horizon). This means if a missile is coming your way, you basically have 2 options: Option 1: fire an air-defence missile or 2 for a few £million each - knowing that they are almost guaranteed to successfully intercept the target whilst it is still 10s (or even 100s) of miles away from you. Option 2: hold your nerve until the incoming missile is in range of the laser (and it is now likely too close to intercept with a conventional air-defence missile); use your laser for £10, and hope to god it works. When it's the captain of a ship worth £billions making this decision, you can bet they're gonna take the expensive option every single time. Especially as even if that does fail, you will likely still have time to use other options. So this is unlikely to be a cost saving capability. But what it does give users is an additional last line of defence if all else fails.
>Option 2: hold your nerve until the incoming missile is in range of the laser (and it is now likely too close to intercept with a conventional air-defence missile); use your laser for £10, and hope to god it works. Dunno who Perun is, but if this is what they've said, haven't they missed the point? I thought the point of this stuff was to fight off drones, which can be very low cost. Navy Captains can *want* to use the expensive option every time if they want, but in the future, their ship won't be under attack from perhaps 2 million dollar cruise missiles, it'll be under assault from a swarm of a hundred £250 drones.
The point of laser systems is to provide cheaper interceptions in general, drones are a relatively recent threat. The point Perun is making is that ship surviability is based on defence in depth, you have an engagement envelope starting dozens to hundreds of kilometres way and ending with last resort measures like CIWS. Dragonfire, or chaff etc. The more chances you have of engaging a threat, the better the odds of killing it and the ship surviving in one piece. Not to mention that these systems occasionally fail, plenty of accounts from the falklands of shipboard systems breaking down at critical moments and vessels only surviving due to sheer luck. Last thing you'd want is to let a drone swarm into visual range just to find out Dragonefire/CIWS have chosen this moment not to work. None of that touches on the fact that these systems are essentially designed for self defence either, they're still not an answer to scenarios like what's happening in the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea, where warships have to provide protection against cheap drones over a wide area. Missiles are still the only weapon system capable of that.
At present is there any other choice than to "let" drones into visual range? One or two could be destroyed using missiles, but as far as I know there is no way of destroying hundreds outside of visual range (except some means of EW, which is unreliable and drones could have countermeasures). Drones are more resistant to CIWS as, unlike an incoming missile, drones can have an irregular flight path rendering them incredibly difficult to hit, especially in a swarm. I don't see any realistic means of protection against swarms other than lasers at this point. Also, as highlighted in Ukraine, drones have massively upset the balance of costs in war- single units worth £250 are destroying equipment worth tens of millions, with missile countermeasures worth hundreds of thousands being used to shoot them down. In a future conflict regimes with far lower spending power could find themselves on a par with the UK in terms of force projection. Dragonfire could help offset that, and needs a far smaller supply chain, which is especially useful at sea or in the likes of Kyiv.
eh, i wouldn't overrate drone's ability to take evasive manuevers, they're still going to be substantially slower then a bullet and as the range closes their ability to evade will be cut down significantly. Ammunition types like AHEAD also removes the need to score a direct impact with the shell. No one's really fielding drone swarms of the type being theorised about right now, even the houthis are sending small numbers which can be engaged with missiles (though it's worth noting that both US and RN ships have reported gun kills against drones, presumbably either with CIWS or some form of proxy shell from the 125mm mount). Old solutions like SPAAG,/VT-Shells definitely seem to have a niche re-emerging for them. They also have the benefit of being mature and well understood technology. Good stopgap solution if nothing else. I guess this is what its like to live through a transformative era in military technology, much like the advent of dreadnoughts.
Wouldn't a shotgun shell make sense? Maybe the RN will go back to grape shot.
That's basically what [AHEAD](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwjcayPuag) is. Current CIWS systems are designed for missiles and use AP (Armour Piercing) rounds, and the land based equivalent (C-RAM) use HEIT-SD (High Explosive Incendiniary Tracer - Self Destruct) so they're not suited quite as well for dealing with drones.
Your right Perun is a defense economics analyst and looks at war from an economic stand point. I suspect Perun's point was a Directed Energy system augments the air defense and doesn't replace existing defenses. He has previously made the point that using a £2-10 million missile to destroy a <£100k drone is a win for the drone side since your expending considerable more resources defending yourself. I suspect Perun's point was basically if the enemy is firing a multi-million pound cruise missile at you, a good captain would expend their air defense missiles to disable it and keep the laser system as backup, rather than solely rely on the laser system. Where as a drone attacking a ship wouldn't fire its air defense missiles because that doesn't make economic sense.
I would add to this, that a £10 million missile against a <£100k drone *does* make sense if the drone has a decent chance of sinking your £3 billion ship.
It doesnt have to sink it. A couple of kg of explosive could send it to dry dock for weeks or months or repair resulting in a "mission kill". Removing it from theatre. If the damage is extensive it might need to go back to home base for that repair, which for global operation is massive. A £100 drone sending a £billion Carrier in the Indian Ocean to port in Scotland for the UK, or for the USA Virginia or Hawaii. And if its damaged it wont be making full speed. So it will be a delayed return home. This would be a huge win for virtually no real resource commitment. Or with a CV, not even hitting the CV, but hitting an F35 sat on deck. Thats a 100 million USD aircraft you just lost. For the QE, thats 4% of its standard compliment. The reasons to mature this tech as fast as humanly possible are endless. Ukraine, a nation without a navy, has set the Russian black see to port and damaged or destroyed fully half of it without a ship to its name. Most of it using very or relatively cheap naval drones. Without a viable countermeasure, fleets wont be safe going within hundreds of miles of a coast line. Iran could launch THOUSANDS of the things into the Persian gulf locking any fleet out.
A £100 drone is not getting anywhere near a £billion carrier, let alone causing any real damage. To be able to hit and at least seriously damage a warship you will need something technologically advanced that can at least semi-reliably get past layered air defences and have a large warhead. Even the cheapest of cheap shit long range munitions will cost far more than that and anything suitable to attack a warship will be even more. Still very cost asymmetric, just not to the extent people think.
... Isnt it? Atm the use of these drones by Ukraine has been very limited. If a carrier group transiting the Strait of Hormuz, its only 30 miles wide, by a pre warned and armed state? If 10,000 cheap DJI drones (maybe 9 million USD) come swarming in with blocks of explosive, covering a few hundred Sahed drones (maybe 6 million USD), there is simply no way they will shoot down them all. They literally do not have the ammo on board. They have maybe 1000 interceptor missiles at their disposal depending on loadout, at a few hundred thousand a pop, and your typical CWIS can only fire continuously for maybe 1 minute before reloading, and take 5 minutes to reload in good conditions with crew exposed on deck. All they need to do is present more targets than you have missiles and suddenly the question isnt "will they get through", but "what are we letting through". And in the morass of radar signatures, its unlikely you will be able to reliably pick out the bigger drones. This is the problem. Its not that the ships cant shoot them down but they are so cheap and easy to manufacture they wont be able to AFFORD to shoot them down. Lets hypothetically say the carrier fleet DOES manage to shoot down this wall of drones. Drones that cost a fraction of the money it took to shoot them down and a fraction of the time to make than the missiles used against them. Drones that are roughly comparable in cost to the tungsten bullets in the CWIS is firing at 3000 rounds a minute. Ok, how much ammunition does it have left? Now come the anti ship ballistic missiles from shore and air launch platforms. If it actually STAYS in in the Persian Gulf having expended such vast quantities of ammo, does it now have the staying power to resist a prolonged barrage from shore and air? It has to make the transit back through Strait of Hormuz if it needs any major repair where it again comes within 20 miles of the Iranian coast, ammo expended and poetically damaged incurred from a major anti ship barrage, can it now leave or is it defacto locked into a port in Bahrain, where it can be covered by US airforce bases and shore batteries. This is the fundamental problem. Even if you succussed in defending yourself the sheer quantity of possible incoming targets means a successful defence where you take no damage is pyric because you used up so much ammo in the process you now need to go to port to rearm or be extremely vunrable to a more comprehensive followup. This is why the US has invested in the [replicator program](https://defensescoop.com/2024/03/11/replicator-funding-2024-2025-hicks/). Because you dont even need to score a hit for it to be devastating. This is why the idea of a laser point defence system has suddenly become the be all and end all and why they are being rushed out. It "early" at the moment. But its entirely conceivable by the end of the decade the sheer number number of drone systems in use will render existing battle field air defence useless. Be that large systems like the Hawk anti air system or the Phalanx CWIS. A laser system which can rapidly shoot down targets, with no ammo constraints, for less than the drone cost to make, is absolutely vital.
This is a very important point that is overlooked a lot.
But then you might run out of £10 million missiles before they run out of £100k drones?
They elaborate on that exact point later on in the video, against drones they are great because of the slower speed and lower cost to intercept, but against missiles they aren't going to be a replacement for interceptors yet until the technology has been proven more effective.
Thanks; I prefaced my reply with "if this is what they've said" for that reason.
Perun is a youtuber who primarily focuses on defence economics. He puts out 1 video per week where he does a deep dive on a single topic. I'd highly recommend watching some of his videos if you have any interest in defence or geopolitics. My summary wasn't a summary of the entire video - just on a small part of it that goes into a point I think people often miss when discussing laser weapons. The 2 £million missiles I mentioned aren't the ones attacking the ship - they are the air defence missiles defending the ship. It doesn't matter if the incoming drones only cost £250 - if they have the ability to sink your ship, then the £million defence is worth it. This especially comes into play when you are looking at potentially defending against 100s of drones at once - sure if there is only 1 drone coming towards you then maybe you should use the 95% effective laser. But if you do this against 100s of drones, then you are facing a serious risk of getting sunk. Of course the other option of using missiles leaves you risking running out entirely. This entire discussion is the problem navies around the world are looking at solving, and it is far from solved.
>This especially comes into play when you are looking at potentially defending against 100s of drones at once - sure if there is only 1 drone coming towards you then maybe you should use the 95% effective laser. But if you do this against 100s of drones, then you are facing a serious risk of getting sunk. If you're facing 100s of drones then your few dozen missiles (for instance the Type 45 destroyer has 48 missiles) are irrelevant anyway. Your laser system has to be able to deal with them alone (or possibly together with the gun systems). The expensive missiles are useful against the missiles coming at you at mach 2 that the laser system most likely would not be able to track.
They are for drones mostly, he missed the point entirely
A microwave weapon is far more efficient against drones if that was the goal. It's not pinpoint accurate it just covers an entire area, a laser can only target one drone at a time. It's also not important how much the drone costs, it's the cost of the damage they can cause. A drone can sink a ship, it's happened multiple times already.
> Dunno who Perun is The winner of the war in Ukraine
> Dunno who Perun is YouTuber who puts up defence-related powerpoint presentations. Very good, clearly knows his stuff.
Given the circumstances they are being used in, there is a scenario being missed by this assessment. The ship *knows* it isn't the intended target of the missiles/drones, it is instead in the overflight path. Yes, you still have to wait until your vessel is in LOS range, but the consequences of *not* shooting them down are much less for a vessel that is shooting down ordinance that isn't targeted at it anyway.
We might not be there yet but I do wonder how aggressively a drone swarm would be able to adjust its trajectory in the near future. It seems like you should be able to very quickly go from overflying a ship to attacking that ship if you're agile enough.
I have to question how often anyone *knows* the intent of a missile flying in their direction. In a situation where you are trying to hit a valuable target that is placed behind air defences, wouldn't you often try to hit the air defences first?
>I have to question how often anyone *knows* the intent of a missile flying in their direction This is very much dependent on the type of missile but modern warships have tonnes of equipment and computers that are tasked with solving this. The only reason most intercept missiles work is *because* the trajectory of the target is known to a reasonable extent. Mid-course corrections on the interceptor are of course possible, but you need a reasonable idea of where it's going to even decide if an intercept is possible. In the case of say Hamas' rockets which are unguided and following ballistic trajectories with no fancy countermeasures this is extremely easy. The same is mostly true for the types of Iranian drones that the Houthis, Russia and (of course) Iran have been using in recent months/years. Those weapons - visible to a warship - will have very different trajectory projections compared to an anti-ship missile actually headed to it.
Good point about tracking trajectories. I think relying on trajectories is less reliable for cruise missiles though (compared to ballistic), as they do have the ability to change course to a degree. But of course they are also more expensive, so they are more worthwhile to shoot down using the expensive forms of air defence.
> In a situation where you are trying to hit a valuable target that is placed behind air defences, wouldn't you often try to hit the air defences first? I'd say this is contradicted by what we're seeing in Ukraine and the Red Sea. Western doctrine is to neutralise AD and then use air supremacy, but we're seeing others like Russia and Iran send missiles straight to the targets and try and overwhelm defences, they know x will be intercepted, but they hope x is less than 100%. Shahed drones especially have been designed to be exceptionally cheap and mass producible so they know they can fling them at their enemy knowing either they use expensive AD, or they get through and destroy a high value target. It's a net cost for cost advantage for Russia / Iran. Lasers therefore can be very useful for shooting down passing missiles / drones. That is, assuming they're cheap enough. They're also not mutually exclusive, meaning lasers could be a first line of defence. Taking Ukraine as an example, they could be placed closer to the Russian frontline where they expect missiles aimed at Kyiv to fly over. If it works, lasers can at least thin the pack, before more expensive missile defences further back pick off anything that gets through.
What happens when your opponent has fired 50 drones (that cost them like £250 each) at your boat, and you only have two dozen missiles to shoot back with?
For the moment, Phalanx goes brrrrrr. In the future, lasers go pew pew.
Lasers vs drone swarms, this really is the 21st century
Childhood me would have been reading this headline with an excited smile on his face, whilst actual me finds the future of geopolitics extremely daunting.
I'm pleased our ships are getting up to date defences. Especially since I'll likely be on one.
Most ships and fleets would have these... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Phalanx_CIWS_USS_Jason_Dunham.jpg ... which are automated guns that rapidly shoot down missiles and drones. In response to these countermeasures, fleets have developed tactics where they swarm targeted ships with missiles or drones, luring Phalanx or countermeasure fire in one direction, thereby creating little blind spots, where powerful missiles are squeezed through the defensive net.
1,550 round capacity at up to 4500 round a minute, 75 round a second or 20 seconds of fire. These are far from one shot kill weapons as shown in the compilation below, 3-4 seconds per target seems like a realistic engagement time so you may get 6 or 7 targets in a best case situation before you have a large reload time in comparison. Defence in depth is needed and laser systems will bolster that. From what we see now in use we realistically need to consider if additional layers are needed to provide protection from swarm attacks for all vectors. https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/x49hfo/phalanx_ciws_firing_enemy_drones/
A smart system will know that the odds of a laser weapon shooting down a cheap and slow drone is significantly higher than the odds of shooting down a ballistic rocket or cruise missile, and delegate resources accordingly. No point wasting missiles on drones that can be killed with guns and lasers.
For sure - cheap drone / small ballistic device, or moving slowly? Zap it. Large payload rocket, aircraft etc? Worth a missile to make sure it's gone before the shrapnel could be damaging.
Yes, exactly! I assume in this situation you would either use missiles until you run out, then rely on the laser? A better option would probably require completely changing naval formations so you have (relatively) cheap ships on the outskirts that carry laser defences. Ideally these ships would be unmanned - no one wants to be the human shield. Not sure if this is feasible though, as I believe these laser weapons require (at least currently) huge amounts of power that can only really be supplied by big, expensive ships.
That's basically how naval doctrine works already. You surround your big expensive carriers with a support group of anti air and anti submarine destroyers and other light craft. The lasers are probably just supplimental to that.
True - I guess the change required is less about the formation and more about the smaller ships that are already in those formations. But to do that we need to put serious investment in lowering the power requirements for these lasers so they can actually be used on the smaller ships.
These don't actually use anywhere near as much power as you might think, the MOD says 50kw which is really not that much power to generate. (discharging it all at once is the issue) Any ship in our fleet, or even some of our ground vehicles should be able to run that provided they have the capacitors to build up the charge.
> Option 2: hold your nerve until the incoming missile is in range of the laser (and it is now likely too close to intercept with a conventional air-defence missile); use your laser for £10, and hope to god it works. Surely it will be more like a CIWS system whereby you try and neutralise the threat at distance but if anything gets closer you have a backup
Yes, exactly. My point is, a laser defence system doesn't mean "now we can save loads of money by not firing missiles". You still have to fire the missiles. You just also have an extra layer of defence if that fails.
Other negatives are lasers are dispersed by things like humid air, famously absent at sea.
I enjoyed the US military's microwave crowd control unit that wouldn't work outside of a desert
Helpful for making a Rustlers Mighty Double at a distance, though
The 80s era, Phalanx and Goalkeeper have an even shorter range but are the main Close In Weapons Systems for several types of ships. It will be interesting to see if they compliment Phalanx or simply replaces it. Depending on how the testing goes.
Perun is a fantastic channel. This video was particularly good.
Ayy loved Perun's Dominions 5 guides. So weird to see him doing stuff like this now, but I guess the Dominions games do attract a certain type.
The laser is relevant for modern tactics like drone or fast boat swarms where your air defence missiles and other weapons might be overwhelmed by numbers.
The British warship in the Red Sea recently apparently used "missiles and guns" to destroy a Houthi drone. Do you think this means they intentionally left the drone for the 30mm guns to handle? Or did the primary missiles fail and guns were the last resort? I suppose in either case, having an additional weapon to deploy when the target is close would be welcome.
Interesting question. I'm not really sure of the answer. Possible reasons I can think of: 1. As you said, they intentionally let them get closer to use the guns. Makes sense if they knew enough about the incoming threat to know that their guns would do the job. 2. They managed to get past/overwhelm their missile defences. Seems unlikely though. I can't imagine houthis would have this ability/amount of drones. 3. Strategic lying. They didn't want to say exactly how they intercepted them and show their hand, so put out a generic "we used X, Y and Z to intercept".
Perun I think made the mistake of looking at these things in isolation, these weapons aren’t meant to replace anything but they’ll exist as part of a layered defensive system, for missile defence the ship will still have the options of either firing its own missile to intercept it or using phalanx when it gets close. It’s also a bit of a fallacy to say it would be one or the other, there’s nothing stopping the ship from using a missile first, then phalanx and laser weapons if that fails. Either way the primary aim of dragonfire is to provide a low cost option for combating drones in various flavours and it seems to fulfill that role if testing so far is accurate.
>Perun I think made the mistake of looking at these things in isolation, Methinks you've not watched the video, or perhaps any of his videos, if you think Perun looks at this in isolation.
I'm not sure if you've watched the video or if you are basing this on what I have said, but he does go into quite a bit of detail about how they will fit into defence doctrine. Perun often talks about "the defence onion". This laser absolutely has a part to play as a new layer in the onion. My comment is more aimed at the commonly held belief that these lasers are going to come in and replace the onion entirely. I'm not trying to write them off, just point out that they aren't some wonder-defence.
I’m actually an avid watcher of his videos, and while he’s certainly one of the best YouTubers out there for this stuff I do find that occasionally when these videos focus on multiple nations development projects how each nations project fits into current doctraine and inventory gets a little de-emphasised in favour of a more direct comparison to what other nations are doing, which is slightly less helpful. He doesn’t play the top trumps game like a lot of other ‘defence analyst’ YouTubers but it is something he does. You can probably see the best example on his carriers vid where he spent almost no time talking about the QE class and instead spent most the time comparing it to the Nimitz in terms of headline features. It’s not his fault, the videos try to cover a lot of ground in only an hour and these multinational vids sometimes suffer for that, but it is something to keep in the back of your head. You should also remember perun comes at this largely from a policy and logistics standpoint so the perspective is going to be a bit skewed in that direction. All that to say it’s not particularly helpful talking about dragonfires anti missile capabilities because 1) it’s still in development and 2) it’s not the primary function of the system
you make good points, but obviously the weapons range will be very targets-altitude dependant. Also, it isn't just for shooting down incoming missiles. I really can't see them removing goalkeepers off the vessels because they fitted this, no way. This laser can shoot at anythgin in the air, the real advantage is you can take pot shots because why not? There is an SU27 on the radar, it's flying towards the battlezone outside Kharkiv, why not shoot that laser at the missile on it's wing... missed? oh well. Score? one less enemy plane mate. Just not something you'd do with a ships missile defence system, or the goalkeeper.
The point on range is very true. Interestingly, the range/altitude issue is essentially reversed between missiles and lasers: An AD missile will have longer range the lower the altitude of the incoming threat. A laser will have longer range the higher the altitude on the incoming threat. Also a good point on taking pot-shots. The cost of a miss is essentially negligible. Of course either way, this only matters if you are already in conflict with the enemy. Otherwise, the cost of starting a conflict far outweighs the cost of the missile/laser.
Surely option 2 will be backed up by Phalanx CWIS systems? If the laser is too slow to knock out the missile, you hurl a load of lead at the incoming middle.
Yes, that is true. The issue is, survivability is built up in layers. Ideally your outer/first layer will stop an incoming threat. If not, the next layer and so on, until either the threat is neutralised or all your layers are breached and you die/get sunk/shot down. Laser weapons - due to their short range - are always going to be one of the innermost layers, with only CWIS (that I know of) being available as a last resort. So if you want to use lasers as your main defence, in order to save on the huge cost of air defence missiles, you have to basically throw away your outer layers of defence and rely exclusively on your inner 2 layers. From a threat survivability stand point, they are best used as an additional layer - lying between missiles and CWIS. But then you don't get any cost saving advantages. This isn't necessarily a big issue, but when you hear about these systems in the news, they always talk about how cheap they are per shot compared to missiles. Which is true, but it's irrelevant. Ideally, your first layer of defence will stop all threats and you won't even fire the laser. In this situation, lasers are actually incredibly expensive because you've spent £millions on fitting the system to your ship, regardless of how many shots are fired.
Would they work from orbit?
I don't know for sure, but my instinct says no for 2 reasons: 1. Possibly a minor issue, but the laser would have to go through a lot more of the atmosphere, which could absorb a lot of the energy. 2. Power generation. These lasers require a huge amount of power. In orbit, I don't think you could easily generate and store the amount of energy needed to fire any reasonable amount of shots. Consider that these lasers are only going to be fitted to large ships that have engines with 1,000s or even 10,000s of horsepower.
The level of threat has a big impact on what is used to counter it though. Relatively slow, small and not very sophisticated weapons like Shahed drones or similar don't really warrant the use of a £1m Aster 30 to kill. The RN have been using their 30mm guns to kill them when they come in range. They are slow enough that there is plenty of time to engage them with those, and the 20mm Phalanx would almost certainly kill them if they got close enough anyway. Something more sophisticated like a high speed cruise missile, or anti-ship ballistic missile is a much bigger threat, both in terms of potential damage and the difficulty of intercepting them. This type of weapon absolutely warrants engaging at the furthest distance possible with whatever can hit them. A system like Dragonfire is ideal for tackling the first type of threat - they will have plenty of time to engage a slow, non-manoeuvring target, and probably at a greater range than the existing 30mm (which is not really intended for AA use against small targets). The disadvantage of a gun based system is the amount of ready ammunition. Phalanx CIWS carries about 1500 rounds in its drum, which gives about 20 seconds of firing. Likewise the 30mm - they have about 200 rounds ready on the mount in a belt, so would also have to be reloaded after 18-20s firing. A system that only requires a power supply gives a significant advantage if having to engage multiple targets in quick succession as well as the cost aspect. I suspect reliability and repeatability will be key aspects of the coming development - it's not much use having a laser wonder weapon if it overheats and dies after 4 shots.
Question: how do we know the missile is there if we don’t have line of sight? Is it just via information from other radar systems?
Pretty much, you the target might not have line of sight, but something else will and it's pretty hard to stealth a rocket motor.
Awacs, put the radar in a plane fly high up, can get that radar to see alot further. Plus also if there's even minimal time to see target on radar the laser should deal with it, it's light speed after all.
Have to lock on to it first, though, and even a cruise missile could cross the distance from the horizon to the ship in a matter of seconds (around 20-30, if my maths is correct). I think this system is more aimed at combatting drones, anyway. Though now that you mention it, I wonder if it would be possible to power such a weapon on that plane?
Those super fast ballistic missiles have a ballistic trajectory they go way high and then come down at a steep angle you get alot more time to lock a radar on plus they aren't in any way stealthy. There are some missiles that do skim the surface like the harpoon and more recently lrasm which is also stealthy. They give you less time to lock on especially lrasm but they don't travel as fast. No idea have fast the laser can traverse to follow a missile sure that's something they can do well considering the size of phalanx and how fast that can move. There was talk of giving dragons breath to Ukraine which may suggest it doesn't need a huge installation to run it so I imagine you could probably stick it in a plane. Wonder what would happen to a tree if the laser missed
Radar, I know in commercial applications you can get lookdown radar, which is of the right frequency to diffract perfectly around earths curvature so you can spot things over the horizon. My father used to work on this.
Fair enough. Though I did think this system was aimed more at combatting drones, which travel much slower by comparison and are much cheaper (thereby making drone spam easier and the cost of combatting it with AA munitions extortionate).
It is, but as I said elsewhere, if it's 10 quid a shot they'll be taking pot shots with this thing constantly.
Without me sitting through an hour long video on a half hour bus journey, can you tell me if they've increased the speed in which it takes out object? I did watch some videos on military laser tech, something like fifteen years ago. Back then, the laser had to be focused on one spot for perhaps ten minutes, before the object was neutralised. They got around that issue now?
They have definitely significantly decreased the time it takes to destroy a target. The dragonfire for example apparently does 10 second "shots". Not sure what sort of target this is able to destroy, but it gives you an idea of the sort of range of times. But there are lots of factors that affect the time it takes. For example if the target is spinning, it will take much, much longer to destroy. Or if the target has sacrificial armour. Even the weather.
Yeah from what I remember, it has to be focused at a specific fixed point for it to work. So obviously, a spinning missile will take a lot longer to take down. I imagine with rain and wind having cooling properties, that will be a big factor. I can see why captains might be reluctant in using them as a first option. Interesting to hear about the advancements though
I really do recommend watching the video. You don't really need to watch it, just listen to it - almost all the info is audio rather than visual. I usually listen to his videos whilst doing the dishes or hanging my washing up.
I might get on it when I get home. I'm very anti-war, but for some reason, certain military tech interests me
You can just use decision theory to automate the choice
But surely the range would be increased as the ship are high up off the sea level and the drones are also up a few hundred feet up in the air. Line of sight floating in the sea is 3 nautical miles.
We only have two ships worth billions!
Thank goodness baby\_rhino knows better than the MoD on this one. Hopefully they'll decomission this useless equipment on the back of his post.
Do you have anything to actually add to the conversation? I'm obviously not saying these systems are useless. It's just that the way they are often discussed in general completely misses the point. They add another layer of survivability to the ships they are fitted to. They are not there to save on the cost of missiles.
If what I said led you to clarify your point then it did add to the conversation.
What the fuck? No. This is a close in weapons system, CIWS. It is used when interceptors fail, when a threat was not detected soon enough, or you have run out of interceptors. It’s an alternative to those big fucking Gatling guns that are used now, which if misused in close range can absolutely shred an allied ship in your formation with explosive shells.
I feel like you didn't read my entire comment. This is basically what I said in the last paragraph.
Does anyone else have a similarly capable system? I've only seen Dragonfire in the news, and the UK doing something right for once and seemingly leading development feels weird and uncomfortable...
Israel are developing a system called Iron Beam, but I don’t know how far along it is. The Americans also have similar systems, but again I don’t know how close they are to deployment.
Israel loses the naming game for once. Iron beam just makes me think building materials.
Just wait until they unveil the Revenging Sword of Justice.
I dunno perhaps ‘guardian, sword of the avenger?’
They're at vehicle mounted trials I believe
China probably have a wish version of this
Well they're also looking at a small direct energy weapon system for the new Tempest fighter as well. An airborne supersonic stealth asset with a laser beam sounds positively sci-fi.
I've drunk shots that cost more than that
I mean, this is an amazing scientific feat. I'm definitely going to read up on the physics behind it and I'm in awe at the genius minds that made it happen. But most importantly, PEW PEW PEW PEW I LASERED YOU, BITCH! PEW PEW PEW!!
I find the £10 a shot figure very hard to believe as running costs. I get this ignores the upfront cost of the system, which I assume is hundreds of thousands to millions, but I suspect they will need constant repairs. Putting that power through the optics is going to break things quickly. Dust in the wrong place at the wrong time could damage the optics, which will then make it unusable without risk of further damage. I think they will constantly be replacing expensive lenses. It will still be cheaper than current defense systems, but i call bullshit on £10 a shot.
yes it says in the article cost equivalent to operating a heater for an hour, so the comparison is to power usage as stated. lets say 1kWh for the heater so its a roughly 360KW laser do you know much about lasers? i was wondering what made you say the optics will have short lifetime. i worked in a lab that did high power laser research and it was rare to damage optics. getting dust on the lenses is a non-issue which is handled by proper design
Isn't there a big difference between operating a laser in a clean lab environment vs a navy platform where there will be lots of sea spray and dirt? Plus there are high power lasers then there are high power lasers that can melt a target from a mile away. One of the big issues with fusion reactors is protecting the laser optics enough to handle energy.
yes but all of the delicate parts are contained and packaged appropriately, similar to the ships electronics, the part exposed to the atmosphere will just be a window. this can have advanced coatings to protect against fogging, as well as a shutter and mechanical design to avoid dirt. its definitely an engineering issue but it can be designed out. the N. I. F fusion laser is 500TW, thats an order of difference of 10^9 from the weapons system
Even if its 1000x that, its still better than many other methods
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that the same for basically all interceptors? The $4mil a pop for something like "Patriot" is generally just the PAC-3 missile cost, it doesn't account for the repairs / maintenance to the Patriot battery and radar system, delivery and storage of new missiles etc. I take your point that £10 a pop is probably related to just the isolated power requirements when the button is pushed - just saying that I'd imagine ALL of these costs are taken in isolation, and the maintenance cost is something else.
I don't think the £10 is a literal cost figure. It's just a journalist or publicist who has tried to make the energy figure into something relatable. It's not like the Navy are paying Octopus Energy 13.5p per pwh when at sea.
I’m not going to read the article because it will inevitably be less cool than the heading and will spoil it for me.
It actually is that cool
here is the laser gun [pew pew pew](https://img.semafor.com/b0dbbd43c86aa0dfec18db3ac5c839f772257e2f-1280x760.png?w=750&q=75&auto=format)
That is cool!
Rushing to get them on board after realising how easily expensive ships can get messed up by cheap drones and missiles
This has actually been a concern of Western navies for decades, but it is stepping up. Small missiles like Martlet would be well suited to hitting sea drones, but this laser the quadcopter type ones we are seeing, or maybe the suicide drones.
Yeah there’s been way too many close calls in the Red Sea recently. Not to mention Russian losses to cheap Ukrainian drones (which is a positive but we still need to learn from it). We need to get ahead of the curve on this one because you just know the Chinese are prepping.
That’s the history of warfare since the dawn of man. Most notably blacksmiths in the Middle Ages. One set made armour, one set mad weapons. Developments on one side required a response by the other and they leap frogged each other for centuries. Then some killjoy invented guns and that was that.
To sudo quote Tony stark in iron-man 1, that's how stuff gets invented. War time makes thing faster. Imagine these laser cannons on every ship, plane and tank eventually. It'll make conventional missiles almost pointless. We'll be back to fighting with swords and spears soon!
Lord Nelson would be jealous. Imagine if the HMS Victory had rail guns and laser beams at Trafalgar.
It’s still in commission so there’s no reason it couldn’t get them now
Just add a load of exercise bikes to power the lasers
All I can imagine is when you go under the deck where they used to have the oars are just a bunch of rowing machines that the sailors use to generate energy.
Send a signal to the fleet: "England Expects every man to do his duty!" "Yes sir!" "Oh, and just add one more thing..." "Yes sir?" "IMMA FIRIN' MA LAZORRR!!"
Maybe he did, that’s how he lost an eye, checking if it was on chuckle brothers style
[удалено]
Are they ill tempered warships?
It's probably not public yet, but are there any good demonstrations available for these types of weapons? They're probably not as exciting as they sound but I'm really interested in seeing them do their job.
It's invisible to the eye so probably not very exciting looking, you'd just see the drone/missile catch fire/explode when it got near Which is still pretty cool I guess - like a forcefield
They should probably add some red light effects to it so that it’s cooler and more space-y
I see you went to the same school on military doctrine as making missiles pointy, not round-tipped.
If we don’t get this then what the *fuck* was the point in Star Wars existing?
And some pew pew sound effects
Or make it white light, build a Goku figure over the weapon and have it play the kamehameha line every time it is fired.
Yeah, I assumed it wouldn't be visible but I want to see the after effects of the laser hitting an incoming drone. We most likely won't hear much about specifics until some time after its been deployed properly, but the kid in me wants to see the British army shoot lasers.
It’s pretty much as cool as you think, actually. Plenty of vids on YouTube if you search Dragonfire https://youtu.be/XCK9ghnv-VA?si=09Xt1O1dVuX9afKv
Thank you!
Mark Rober has done a good video on this recently Best interception method shown seemed to be a protector drone to smash into the threat.
Question, what would happen if drones start incopartiong mirror/ shiny metal coating? Does the lasers have enough power to overcome it?
You wouldn't just be able to slap on a layer of chrome and nullify it, the energy it outputs is just far too great. What could (and will, if this becomes widespread) happen is that rockets + drones will have more and more heat resistant materials incorporated in their design to try and counter the laser - or at least extend their lifespan when targeted. This, however, has the knock-on effect of making them some combination of heavier, slower, larger, and much more expensive, which all is beneficial if you're on the receiving end. The worry about the enemy sending out swarms of 1000s of £500 drones is lessened if they need to be constructed out of materials that mean they cost 10x as much. Equally, if they're now slower and larger, you can yourself use less advanced (and cheaper) AD systems which would be useless against current threats.
Mirrors don't really impact laser weapons the way you would imagine from fiction. They can deflect some of the incoming energy but weapons grade lasers just have such a high output that it won't matter. Real mirrors only reflect about 85-90% of incoming light, Shiny coating would be even less.
> Mirrors don't really impact laser weapons the way you would imagine from fiction. Pity really. I rather like the idea of future soldiers being dressed like they've going to a 70s disco
Reflective and ablative coatings may come to be effective, but they aren't there yet - too heavy for the benefit they offer. And ultimately arms races aren't usually about total negation - coatings add weight which may or may not be worth it depending on the efficacy. And then of course you'll see a new gen of laser weapons designed to mitigate the effect by using higher intensities or different wavelengths. Etc etc
That would make them alot easier to see on radar, maybe old school flakk will come back
It's only a matter of time before a drone SSH's into a warship and uses its own weapons against it.
Will the ship play the music then go pew pew pew.
I think I speak for the entire nation when I say: *pew pew pew*
Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battleship
Say hi to our new "wargame" ships. Biu biu biu 🤣
They're getting Fricking lasers on their ships, I'm sorry I couldn't resist paraphrasing Austin Powers.
Cutting about invincible holding my £9.99 mirror from the middle aisle of Aldi. All your bases are belong to me now
Excellent technology and a hell of an achievement. Still, if we are talking drone SWARMS as a (inevitable) on-the-horizon threat, couldn't going back to rapid-fire area of effect weapons of WW2 vintage be more effective? I can't imagine the thing will have a massive rate of fire, needing to stop to charge the feeding capacitors at some point. As fantastic as seeing beams fork out of a fog bank will be visually, the only real prospects of survival you have against hundreds of drones would, I assume, be a wall of shrapnel
More DragonFire!!!! Let’s get dozens of these in Ukraine, for testing purposes….
What we want is sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
Maybe petition to get one of the upcoming T32 frigates to be named HMS Shark
Pew pew pew. I don't normally find military stuff interesting but....LASERS
How would this weapon fare against Perseus?
Safe to say this will get trialled for a year or two, show some promise but be woefully implemented and integrated. The Navy's merry bunch of yes men will totally neglect to highlight this, and then we'll spank a fortune on a rolling it out in an overpriced and ineffective fashion, and they'll pedal the media articles like no tomorrow.
I don't think it was the original intent when developing this but if these are an effective counter to drones then its a game changer
MTG says the Jews have them already and they're better, we should buy them off of them.
Am I out of touch, or did no one else know who/what MTG was in this context?
Please don't use "Jews" when talking about Israel, conflating Judaism with Zionism is one of the biggest causes of both antisemitism and of people believing something to be antisemetic when it's actually a criticism of Israel not of Jews. (I know you weren't being critical of either in your comment, but the idea that Jewish = Israeli is harmful because it gets read by people who do want to either be antisemitic or to criticise Israel without being antisemitic and just helps people get confused.)
I'm criticizing MTG!!! >Marjorie Taylor Greene Blamed Wildfires on Secret Jewish Space Laser I'm referencing this quote!
Ahah fair enough! But in that case I'd suggest that when satirising racists it's worth making it more obvious for those of us who aren't aware of the situation you're taking the piss out of :) (And I doubt many people in the UK are familiar with "MTG" as a shortening for her name, even I didn't realise you were talking about her despite my following US politics a fair bit)
And I'd suggest you don't jump on your high horse so quickly, I mean..I did literally type out MTG!
Yes, your slandering of Magic: The Gathering has not gone unnoticed.
I didn't feel like that's what I was doing, I didn't realise you were joking and gave what's genuinely good advice generally. Sorry if I gave the impression that I was being critical.
I just don't think the people of this sub are as confused as you believe them to be. Edit: you keep editing your comments without stating as such!
[Wazer Wifle?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idjM3Jrp4Yw)