Navy HELIOS Laser Aboard USS Preble Zaps Drone In Latest Test

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The Navy has disclosed that the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Preble successfully test-fired its High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system to take out an aerial target drone in Fiscal Year 2024. It was the latest major demonstration of the surface fleet’s shipboard laser ambitions, even as other U.S. military laser efforts have faced a reality check in recent years.

Preble’s drone zapping was “to verify and validate the functionality, performance and capability” of HELIOS, and this latest step toward moving shipboard lasers into a fully operational state was revealed in the Pentagon’s annual Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOTE) report that was released Friday night.

Little else was disclosed in the DOTE report regarding where and when Preble, a Flight IIA Arleigh Burke subvariant, fired its laser. The warship shifted homeports from San Diego to Japan in September, just a few days before the end of FY24. TWZ has reached out to the Navy for more information on the test and where HELIOS currently stands, and this report will be updated when that information comes in. 

A rendering of the HELIOS system in action aboard a Navy destroyer. (Lockheed Martin)
A rendering of the HELIOS system in action aboard a Navy destroyer. (Lockheed Martin)

Either way, it’s a capability that Navy brass has been increasingly clamoring for, especially in the past year, as Navy warships shoot down an at-times daily barrage of drones and missiles fired by Iran-backed Houthi rebels over the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Those battles and other global flashpoints have raised continued concerns about the Navy draining its finite missile stocks, as the pacing threat of China looms on the horizon. TWZ has reported on several aspects of the Navy’s battle against the Houthis, including a tally of ordnance expended during more than 400 engagements against the Houthi arsenal of aerial drones, anti-ship cruise missiles, and anti-ship ballistic missiles.  

“When I was in Bahrain as [the Destroyer Squadron 50 commanding officer] 10 years ago, the afloat staging base USS Ponce had a laser on it,” Naval Surface Forces Commander Vice Adm. Brendan McLane told reporters in early 2024, before the Surface Navy Association conference. “We’re 10 years down the road, and we still don’t have something we can field?”

Indeed, the 60-kilowatt HELIOS and other long-promised directed-energy weapons have been a long time coming for the surface fleet. As TWZ previously reported, it was first spotted aboard Preble in 2022. Its debut predates the Houthi fight, but is the type of system that would seem primed to help, at least to a limited degree, ease missile expenditures during similar operations. 

A look at the new High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) laser directed energy weapon installed on the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Preble, with an inset showing a rendering of the system. (U.S. Navy/Lockheed Martin)
The High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) laser directed energy weapon installed on the Navy destroyer USS Preble, with an inset showing a rendering of the system. (U.S. Navy/Lockheed Martin)

TWZ’s past reporting on HELIOS points to why it would be so useful for taking out drone attacks and disabling or destroying small boats. both manned and unmanned, with nefarious intent. 

It can also serve as a “dazzler” to blind or confuse optical seekers on incoming missiles and drones. The dazzler can limit an opponent’s general situational awareness by denying their sensors the ability to surveil the ship. HELIOS also sports its own optical sensors, which can serve a secondary intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) role.

On Preble, HELIOS sits on the warship’s main forward pedestal that hosted the Mk 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapons System (CIWS) on earlier Arleigh Burke class destroyer variants. Flight IIA destroyers currently have only one CIWS installed above the hangar bay. Outside of the handful of destroyers modified to the ‘Rota configuration,’ which feature SeaRAM and Phalanx, Flight I Arleigh Burkes feature two CIWS, front and rear.

The Phalanx Close-In Weapons System (CIWS). (U.S. Navy)
The Phalanx Close-In Weapons System (CIWS). (U.S. Navy)

Lockheed Martin received its first contract from the Navy for work on HELIOS in 2018, but the system builds on a much longer history of directed energy research and development at the company

The system is particularly powerful when paired with the Aegis Combat System. Rich Calabrese, director of Surface Navy Mission Systems for Lockheed Martin, expounded on HELIOS and Aegis during a broader interview with The War Zone in 2021:

“We’re continuously upgrading the multi-source integration infusion capability of the Aegis weapon system and looking to bring in new weapons and sensors and do coordinated hard kill and soft kill. Directed energy weapons … We’re really already integrating the HELIOS Laser Weapon System with the Aegis Weapon System CSL [Common Source Library] in our lab here in New Jersey. In fact, we’ve … The guy who’s now managing the laser program … He let me know the other day that we recently fired a laser here under the control of the Aegis Weapon System computer program. So, we’re building in the capability to do that weapon coordination and to do the hard kill, soft kill coordination in an automated fashion working with the HELIOS Weapon System.”

240212-N-VJ326-1044 SAN DIEGO (Feb. 12, 2024) – Guided missile destroyer USS Preble (DDG 88), left, pulls into port alongside amphibious assault carrier USS Tripoli (LHA 7), Feb. 12. Tripoli is an America-class amphibious assault ship homeported in San Diego. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Malcolm Kelley)
The HELIOS laser system sits on a pedestal in front of the USS Preble’s bridge. (U.S. Navy) Petty Officer 2nd Class Malcolm Kelley

Lockheed Martin is contracted to deliver at least one more HELIOS system for an Arleigh Burke. Company officials said they designed the system with future capability growth in mind as well, including increasing the system’s maximum power up to 150 kilowatts.

Such a power level would allow HELIOS to more rapidly down smaller drones at longer ranges and take on bigger and more complex threats, such as anti-ship cruise missiles and even enemy aircraft, albeit still at relatively shorter distances.

The Navy and Lockheed Martin demonstrated the ability of a solid-state laser directed energy weapon to successfully shoot down a target drone acting as a surrogate for a subsonic cruise missile in 2022, using a weapon called the Laser Layered Defense (LLD) system, during a test at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

HELIOS constitutes one facet of the Navy’s directed energy ambitions, which are now set to eventually include high-power microwave-based systems as well. Fellow destroyers, including the USS Dewey and USS Stockdale, are now equipped with the less powerful Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy (ODIN). Unlike HELIOS, ODIN’s laser can only be used as a dazzler, but it also has secondary surveillance capabilities.

In late 2021, the year before HELIOS debuted aboard the Preble, the San Antonio class amphibious transport dock ship USS Portland engaged a static surface target with its laser directed energy weapon in the Gulf of Aden. That system, known as the Laser Weapon System Demonstrator Mk 2 Mod 0, was placed aboard Portland in late 2019, which The War Zone was first to report, and subsequently used to knock down a small drone in a demonstration in the Pacific Ocean in 2020.

All told, the Pentagon is spending an average of $1 billion annually to develop such weapons for ships, aircraft and ground vehicles, Navy Times reported last year. 

But figuring out how to develop, procure and field such technology has proven challenging, according to a 2023 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. 

The Navy amphibious transport dock USS Portland uses a laser to strike a static surface target in 2021. (U.S. Navy)
The Navy amphibious transport dock USS Portland uses a laser to strike a static surface target in 2021. (U.S. Navy)

The Defense Department has struggled to get “these technologies out of the lab and into the field” for a number of reasons, including difficulty in determining how the force would use them during missions, according to the federal watchdog.

“Without early transition planning and drafting transition agreements, the Navy risks developing technology that is misaligned with operational needs,” the report warned.

The realities of actually deploying and sustaining advanced laser weapons in the field, and just how effective they can be at this time, are also becoming clearer. These revelations have led to the DoD stepping back from some key, long-touted, laser weapons programs recently. 

The US Air Force no longer plans to flight test a laser directed energy weapon on an AC-130J Ghostrider gunship.
The U.S. Air Force scrapped plans to flight test a laser directed energy weapon on an AC-130J Ghostrider gunship. (U.S. Air Force)

Generally, laser weapon systems are chronically over-hyped, especially in the mainstream media, compared to what they can realistically achieve. Laser weapons can only engage one target at a time and they need to dwell on that target steadily for a prolonged period to have an effect, especially lower power-class examples that are fielded today. They also have power and thermal limitations that impact how many shots they can fire back-to-back.

Their range is limited and impacted by atmospheric conditions and their components are delicate and hardening them for hash military use is an ongoing process. So, even in a naval sense, while they still are a very attractive capability, they are for low-volume point defense cases against very limited target sets for the foreseeable future. 

YOKOSUKA, Japan (Oct. 12, 2024) – Sailors assigned to the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Preble (DDG 88) man the rails as the ship pulls into Commander, Fleet Activities Yokosuka. Preble is forward-deployed and assigned to Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 15, the Navy's largest DESRON and the U.S. 7th Fleet's principal surface force. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Quinton A. Lee)
The Navy destroyer USS Preble arrives at its new homeport in Yokosuka, Japan, in October. (U.S. Navy)

Those realities haven’t stopped Navy brass from continuing to hammer the need for shipboard lasers. U.S. Fleet Forces Command head Adm. Daryl Caudle lamented the glacial pace of laser development at last month’s Surface Navy Association annual symposium, Breaking Defense’s Justin Katz reported.

“There’s been many a thesis and dissertation written on building lasers on ships, but we’ve not transitioned that into a place where that’s an acceptable way to actually take out missile systems,” Katz quoted Caudle as saying.

“These things are based on renewable energy, so I can recharge the system … I don’t have to worry about payload [or] volume with directed energy. All those things are appealing to a navy, [but] we just haven’t really matriculated that into a place … that’s ready for prime time,” Caudle continued.

Even as the Navy proceeds with shipboard laser programs like HELIOS, the timing as to when they will actually become a widespread and robust capability remains unclear. Still, recent events are likely to only increase pressure to make shipboard laser weapons a commonplace reality within the U.S. Navy.

Contact the authors: geoff@twz.com, tyler@twz.com