Enter the DragonFire: Type 45 destroyer to be first to receive Navy's new laser weapon
DragonFire – a laser weapon that can destroy high-speed aerial threats like drones – will be fitted to two Royal Navy warships, Luke Pollard has announced.
The Defence Readiness and Industry Minister said the first vessel to receive the directed energy weapon would be one of the new Type 45 Daring-class destroyers in 2027 – five years earlier than planned.
The war in Ukraine has seen both sides attack high-value targets with low-value assets like drones, with expensive defence systems like missiles often needing to be employed to counter them.
Cheap and effective
DragonFire, meanwhile, has proved to be not just effective at destroying aerial threats, but being cost-effective while doing so.
Its most recent trials at the MOD's Hebrides range involved drones which can fly up to 650km/h – twice the top speed of a Formula One car.
This saw the weapon deliver a UK first by using above-the-horizon tracking and targeting to shoot down such drones.
The laser system costs just £10 per shot and is accurate enough to hit a £1 coin from a kilometre away.
In contrast, traditional missile systems can cost upwards of hundreds of thousands of pounds per shot.
Meeting the threat
News of the system's deployment was announced as a £316m contract was awarded for DragonFire, the joint brainchild of MBDA UK, QinetiQ and Leonardo.
Mr Pollard told BFBS Forces News reporter Tom Sables the weapon system had now passed a significant milestone for both the technology and the Royal Navy.
He said: "It's cutting-edge technology that in particular goes after a problem and a threat that we're seeing to our warships, of adversaries being able to use relatively low-cost drones to deplete our ammunition stocks of, generally speaking, high-end missiles."
Mr Pollard said the UK was adapting to meet evolving threats – and that needed to be done sooner rather than later.
"Well, I'm an impatient minister," he said. "I'm impatient because we need to adopt new technologies faster to meet the threats that we're facing.
"The Strategic Defence Review... sets out the new threats that we're facing. We're facing our adversaries working together, collaborating more, sharing technologies. We're also seeing threats in new domains, in areas that we previously were not needing to defend against – space, cyber, undersea cables.
Innovate and iterate
"So that means we've got to innovate. And the UK innovates by having our military, our industry and our science and research working closer together.
"Now we've got a competitive market out there. And there'll still be competition for contracts. But as we spend more on defence, as a minister, I'll be wanting more value. I'll be wanting things deployed faster.
"And perhaps most importantly, I want that technology to be spiralled. Because we're seeing from Ukraine, if you don't spiral your drone every two to three weeks, it's not effective on the frontline.
"And it's precisely that pace of iteration I'm going to be impatient in getting it deployed, but I want it to be iterated, invested in, improved continuously."
Enemy threat depleted, not stocks of ammo
When using a conventional missile system on a warship, in addition to the financial cost, the vessel would need to go back to port to rearm when its munition stocks were depleted.
DragonFire, on the other hand, has the ability to have an unlimited "magazine" as long as there is fuel in the destroyer, enabling it to continue to fire laser beams at aerial threats.
"When one of our destroyers gets DragonFire... it will have an advantage over every other air defence, destroyer on the planet, because it will have a directed energy weapon as part of layered air defence measures," Mr Pollard concluded.
Related topics
Join Our Newsletter
