Navy Adds More Destroyers, Arms Them with Lasers

Related Video Above: Helios

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

The Navy is moving quickly to arm its growing fleet of destroyers with a variety of scalable, high-powered lasers intended to incinerate enemy drones, helicopters and fixed wing targets, intercept incoming anti-ship missiles and even perform surveillance optics and targeting for ship-mounted weapons systems.

Ship fired lasers can introduce an entirely new, and highly impactful, tactical advantage to U.S. Navy warship offensive and defensive operations. 

Of course they are much lower cost than expensive interceptor missiles but they are also inherently scalable, meaning they can be tailored to either disable or destroy targets.

Should an incoming enemy anti-ship missile be traveling over heavily trafficked ocean areas, a kinetic “explosion” dispersing fragments would be likely to cause civilian casualties. A laser weapon, however, can simply incinerate the target with much less fragmentation and explosive “energetics.”

Helios: High-Energy Laser with Optical-dazzler and Surveillance

One laser system now being integrated on ships is called HELIOS, for High-Energy Laser with Optical-dazzler and Surveillance, a system now arming some DDG 51 destroyers with offensive and defensive weapons capability. Lasers such as HELIOS also bring a substantial optical component, meaning they can act as a sensor to track targets and help with necessary surveillance missions. 

Lasers could also in some instances enable surface warships to close in more fully upon enemy positions, given that deck-mounted guns could be supplemented by laser weapons attacking at the speed of light and engineered to pinpoint narrow target areas with precision-guidance technology.