Lockheed Martin’s successful delivery of the first production model of the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) to the US Navy marks an important strategic milestone in the global race to develop and deploy directed energy weapons (DEW), says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

Tristan Sauer, Land Domain Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “The US’ defense industry has made significant strides in the field of DEW development over the past few years, as Lockheed Martin was able to transition from design to prototype in a mere two years following the award of the initial $150 million contract under the Surface Navy Laser Weapons Systems (SNLWS) Increment 1 program in 2018.”

The first prototype HELIOS laser weapons system (LWS) was already being integrated on an Arleigh-Burke class destroyer in 2020, while the second went to the White Sands Missile Range for laboratory testing that same year. HELIOS is a unique scalable 60kW LWS enabling the integration of multiple fire modes, and is thus capable of dazzling electro-optical sensors and gathering intelligence as well as inflicting significant thermal damage to hostile targets, a versatile and transformative weapons capability which still remains unattainable for many nations worldwide.

Sauer continues: “Though the pace of global DEW development has certainly accelerated over the past decade, producing ‘combat ready’ high-energy lasers remain a significant challenge with very few states purporting to have fielded operational high-energy lasers. For example, both the Chinese military’s 30kW Silent Hunter and LW-30 laser weapons systems have yet to be fielded en-masse.

“Meanwhile, the UK’s Laser Directed Energy Weapon (LDEW) program, colloquially known as ‘Dragonfire’, only completed the preliminary trails of their high-energy laser this July, while Israel announced earlier this month that its flagship Iron Beam LWS continues to undergo late-stage development. Only the Russian military’s Zadira-16, several of which were reportedly deployed to Ukraine, could be considered a widely operational high-energy LWS, and even then, the veracity of those reports remains difficult to assess.”

The US Navy’s decision to field the HELIOS system as part of the Aegis Combat System, an integrated naval weapons solution which currently equips 113 ships in the US Navy fleet, indicates an undeniable level of confidence in the system’s capabilities. The Aegis Combat System provides a layered command and control framework for the deployment of a vessel’s weapons, and HELIOS’ multi-role LWS provides a compact, layered air defense solution with both lethal and non-lethal effects.

Furthermore, HELIOS’s advanced target identification and tracking software has been optimized to counter the emerging threat posed by low-altitude, high speed drones, which the US Navy anticipates will constitute a large proportion of the future threat envelope faced by US surface warfare vessels.

Sauer adds: “Whilst other US military LWS development initiatives such as the Army’s DE-MSHORAD program with Raytheon or the Air Force Research Laboratory’s SHiELD project remain challenged by SWaP-C limitations, the Navy’s HELIOS deployment is a testament to the service’s consistent and long-term support of DEW development, which through steady investment and determination overcame severe technical challenges to produce one of the most advanced and versatile weapons in the US military’s arsenal today.”