Officials from MBDA, Leonardo and QinetiQ confirmed to Naval News that they were working on ‘second-generation’ designs leveraging technology and techniques proven in the DragonFire prototype tested in conjunction with the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) – the science arm of the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
Exploitations for both maritime and land-based applications are foreseen: in the former case, LDEW weapons are seen to offer near-to-medium utility against fast inshore attack craft (FIACs), unmanned air systems (UASs), and intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance (ISR) sensors.
Representing a combined MoD/industry investment of over £100 million, DragonFire is a 50 kW-class demonstrator built to prove key LDEW enabling technologies at a weapon system level, demonstrate the ability to acquire, track, engage and defeat relevant targets, and establish a credible sovereign capability to meet UK defence needs. As leader of the UK DragonFire consortium, MBDA UK has taken overall system responsibility as well as developing command and control and image processing capabilities; Leonardo has built the beam director, which enables the LDEW system to point and track on moving targets with millimetric accuracy; while QinetiQ has provided the laser source, and developed coherent beam-combining technology designed to enhance power density and increase engagement range.
According to the MoD, the latest end-to-end trials, conducted on the MoD Hebrides range during Q4 2023, successfully demonstrated the ability of DragonFire to track dynamic air targets and deliver high-end effects at range. The LDEW system was tested at various powers against representative air and maritime target at varying ranges, altitudes and speeds.
Dstl on 11 March released declassified footage showing the DragonFire demonstrator being tested on the MoD Hebrides range against ‘above the horizon’ targets. While the full range of target sets was not disclosed, Dstl officials confirmed that a Banshee target drone was amongst the air threats engaged.
“The DragonFire LDEW system has proven itself in testing and has the very real potential for it to transform the UK’s defence capability,” said Dstl in a statement. “LDEW offers a number of significant benefits, including reduced logistic, cost burden and collateral damage in operations.”
CGI depicting the employment of a hypothetical maritime LDEW fitted to a Royal Navy (RN) Type 26 frigate was also released by Dstl. The scenario showed the use of the laser weapon in counter-FIAC, counter-ISR and counter-UAS roles.
Naval News understands that the DragonFire system is currently stored in a secure facility, with components undergoing refurbishment in preparation for additional trials. In the meantime, the three industry partners are now working to engineer ‘productised’ LDEW designs based on the DragonFire modular architecture to meet potential user requirements in both the maritime and land environments.
“The technology is there to provide front-line users with options in the next years, and we can see the military relevance,” said Richard Wray, MBDA UK’s director of engineering.
“We’ve demonstrated military utility, and therefore the next step is how to take it to something that can be used by one of our armed forces.
“So for the sort of applications that we’re considering [in or roadmap] we know how we would approach that for producing multiple systems.”
Richard Wray, MBDA UK’s director of engineering
Kenny McCormick, Leonardo’s head of capability – advanced targeting, said there was a good understanding of what it would need to scale up or down, but that work would be required to ‘harden’ the system to make it suitable for fielding. “We recognise that going forward, and moving into some sort of delivery programme, we would need to improve reliability. We are currently using some COTS [commercial-off-the-shelf] equipment that would not survive the military environment – but we have identified routes to resolve these sorts of issues.
“Also, the current beam director was built to demonstrate the required capability and performance [but] there are massive opportunities to reduce size, weight and power.”
At this stage, industry is still waiting on the MoD and front-line commands to finalise detailed LDEW requirements and procurement plans. Navy Command has previously outlined ambitions for a 150 kW-class laser weapon for integration in Type 26 frigates from the early 2030s; its roadmap is also believed to be considering opportunities for an interim standalone LDEW fit on RN ships.
Alongside its involvement in UK DragonFire, Leonardo is in parallel advancing the development of ‘military-grade’ fibre amplifiers with the aim of securing a sovereign UK capability. “What drives the need for this is the operating environment,” said McCormick. “COTS fibre lasers are designed to operate in a machine shop, which is a very temperature-controlled environment. You can’t control the military environment to that same level, and so the output power falls off
“So we’ve been working with Dstl on how we maximise the performance across a wider environmental band.”
The other key issue, McCormick said, is vibration. “In a COTS amplifier, the fibre is taped down, and that’s not going to work if it’s on a [platform] with constant low frequency and high frequency vibration. So we’re developing techniques to ensure that the fibre in the system and all the optical components remain at optimal performance when subjected to those levels of vibration.”
Addressing these two issues also brings a massive increase in reliability. “It means we can offer reliability in the thousands [of hours] as opposed to the hundreds that you’ll get with COTS amplifiers,” said McCormick. Leonardo has currently developed this technology to about TRL 5 in preparation for manufacture. “We’ve got demonstrators lined up,” McCormick said. “Beyond that, the next phase of the joint Leonardo/Dstl programme will get us up to TRL 7.”
UK MoD video highlighting Hebrides LDEW end-to-end test 2023 / Transition to Maritime LDEW engagement animation: