The British Dragonfire laser, and the Long Arc of Directed Energy Weapons
- 2 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Wednesday 11 February 2026
The United Kingdom’s Dragonfire programme is often presented as a sudden leap into the future, a clean alternative to the increasingly expensive arithmetic of missile defence. In reality it is the latest point on a long, uneven curve of directed energy weapons development—an effort stretching from cold war laboratories to today’s drone-saturated battlefields. Dragonfire matters not merely because it may burn holes in small aerial targets, but because it expresses a strategic wager: that the economics of naval defence can be improved by shifting some proportion of the defensive burden from expendable interceptors to electrical power.
Dragonfire has already cleared several political and technical hurdles. The Ministry of Defence has described the system as capable of very high precision and extremely low cost-per-engagement, with a 10-second firing cost broadly comparable to running a domestic heater for an hour, typically less than £10 per shot. In November 2025 the United Kingdom awarded MBDA a £316 million contract to deliver Dragonfire systems to the Royal Navy from 2027, with public statements indicating initial installation on a Type 45 destroyer. These details are not trivial—when a government begins to specify dates, hull-classes and contract values, it is moving beyond demonstration into procurement, doctrine and fleet planning.
Yet the larger story is not simply that lasers have arrived. It is that lasers are arriving into a world that is already adapting to them.
From chemical monsters to solid-state practicality
Directed energy weapons are an old dream, but they have repeatedly collided with the practicalities of size, power and heat. The earliest military laser concepts that approached missile-defence ambitions tended to rely upon chemical lasers—powerful, but logistically burdensome, and often enormous. The US–Israeli Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) programme demonstrated that a laser could destroy rockets and artillery in tests in the early 2000s, but the system’s scale and operational impracticality contributed to its cancellation. The lesson was sobering: it is possible to make a laser that works, and still end up with a weapon that cannot be deployed in meaningful numbers or in the places where it is most needed.
The decisive enabling shift has been the advance of solid-state lasers and beam combining, alongside better sensing and fire-control. Modern programmes increasingly aim for weapons that are physically smaller, electrically powered and integrated into existing combat systems. The United States Navy’s early shipboard Laser Weapon System (LaWS) aboard USS Ponce in 2014 became an important proof that a maritime laser could be authorised for operational defensive use, even if it remained limited in power and scope. LaWS did not transform naval warfare, but it helped to turn lasers from a laboratory curiosity into an operational question—what do commanders do with a weapon that can fire as long as the ship can generate power and manage heat.
Dragonfire sits firmly in this modern phase—smaller, electrically powered and designed for integration into an operational architecture rather than existing as a standalone spectacle.
What Dragonfire is for, and what it is not for
It is tempting to describe Dragonfire as a replacement for missile defence. That is unlikely in the near term. Lasers are line-of-sight weapons, and their effectiveness is shaped by atmosphere, sea spray, turbulence and weather. In the maritime environment—fog, rain and salt aerosols are not marginal nuisances but routine conditions. A laser that performs well on a clear day will still face the reality that war at sea is often fought in poor visibility.
Dragonfire’s more realistic promise is as part of layered defence—conserving expensive missiles for the most stressing targets whilst dealing cheaply with drones, small boats and perhaps some classes of incoming munitions under favourable conditions. The Ministry of Defence has framed Dragonfire in precisely that economic register, contrasting low-cost laser shots with very expensive missile interceptors. The strategic logic is that a modestly sized fleet can regain defensive depth by reducing the rate at which she consumes her most expensive magazines.
This is also why the 2027 deployment target matters. It is not simply an engineering timetable; it is a doctrinal one. A Royal Navy ship with a working laser changes how she allocates her Sea Viper or Sea Ceptor shots, how she responds to drone swarms and how she thinks about staying power during prolonged attacks.
The American approach: integration first, then scale
The United States has treated directed energy weapons as a broad portfolio rather than a single flagship. At sea her approach has emphasised incremental fielding: lower-powered optical dazzlers to disrupt sensors, and higher-powered systems for physical defeat as power and integration improve.
Two American naval efforts are particularly revealing. The first is ODIN—an optical dazzler designed to counter uncrewed systems primarily by disabling or confusing sensors rather than burning through airframes. ODIN has been installed across multiple Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, suggesting that the United States values “soft kill” options that can be fielded at scale and integrated into everyday operations. The second is HELIOS, a higher-power laser system intended to deliver both sensor dazzling and hard-kill effects, and to be integrated into the Aegis combat system. The US Navy has reported successful testing of HELIOS against drones, and the system continues to be expanded through operational experimentation.
On land the United States has pursued very high power levels for the defence of fixed or semi-fixed assets. Congressional Research Service reporting describes the Army’s Indirect Fire Protection Capability laser effort as aiming at the 300 kW class to counter cruise missiles, uncrewed systems and rocket, artillery and mortar threats. This points to an American belief that lasers become truly decisive only when they climb into power regimes that stress small missiles and rockets—an ambition that remains technologically and logistically demanding.
Compared with this, Dragonfire appears closer to the US Navy’s pragmatic seaborne path than to the US Army’s high-power land-based ambitions—field something that works, learn doctrine and reliability, then scale.
The Chinese approach: opacity, signalling and counterspace overtones
China’s directed energy programmes are harder to assess from public information. Beijing has clear incentives to conceal technical performance, doctrine and fielding timelines. What can be said with more confidence is that China treats directed energy as part of a broader modernisation narrative—displayed when it serves strategic messaging, obscured when it serves operational security.
Reporting around China’s 2025 military parade noted the display of directed energy and high-power microwave capabilities associated with counter-drone defence, and placed them alongside other advanced systems intended to underline military modernisation. This matters because it suggests that Beijing wants her audience—domestic, regional and global—to assume that China is advancing in this domain, even if the operational maturity of particular systems is uncertain.
A second strand is counterspace. US official statements have repeatedly emphasised that China and Russia are developing capabilities intended to disrupt or degrade space-enabled military advantages, and directed energy is often discussed in this strategic orbit alongside jamming and other counterspace tools. The implication is not necessarily that shipborne lasers will routinely shoot down missiles at sea in the near term, but that lasers and microwaves may be used to interfere with sensors—satellite imaging, drone optics and guidance seekers—where “soft kill” effects can be operationally valuable even when hard-kill remains difficult.
In short, the Chinese approach appears to mix selective disclosure with deterrent signalling, and may place particular emphasis on sensor attack—an area where secrecy and ambiguity can be operational advantages.
Likely counter-measures: the duel between beam and design
If and when Dragonfire enters service, adversaries will not simply accept higher losses. They will adapt. The history of air defence is the history of measure and counter-measure, and directed energy will follow the same pattern.
Tactical counter-measures in the engagement itself
Saturation and distraction
The most obvious response is quantity. Lasers are fast, but they are not omnipotent—each hard-kill engagement requires dwell time on target. If attackers can present many targets, or mix drones with decoys, they can force a defending ship to make choices, particularly if multiple targets arrive from different bearings. This is not a new idea; it is the logic of the swarm applied to a new defensive layer.
Weather, aerosols and obscurants
The maritime environment provides natural laser counter-measures. Humidity, rain and sea spray can reduce effective range and lethality. Attackers can also generate artificial obscurants—smoke, aerosol clouds, or deliberately created spray—especially for small-boat threats. These techniques are crude, but lasers are sensitive to the medium through which they propagate.
Manoeuvre, tumbling and hardened skins
A laser’s hard-kill effect depends upon putting enough energy into a small area long enough to cause failure. Targets can attempt to reduce dwell by violent manoeuvre, spinning or tumbling, spreading heat across a wider surface. They can also use ablative coatings that char and shed material, carrying away heat, or reflective finishes tuned to particular wavelengths. None of these is a perfect shield—reflectivity degrades as surfaces heat and roughen—but they can buy precious seconds.
Sensor attack on the laser system
A laser weapon is also a sensor system. If attackers can dazzle or blind the laser’s own electro-optical tracking, or disrupt stabilisation, they can reduce the probability of kill without needing to “defeat” the beam in physics. This points towards a contest of optics, filters and adaptive algorithms.
Operational counter-measures aimed at the platform
Force the defender into emission and reveal
Laser engagements may create patterns—when and where ships are forced to use the system, and under what conditions she becomes effective. Even if the beam itself is invisible, the defensive behaviour can be observed and exploited.
Attack the energy chain
Lasers depend upon power generation and cooling. Against a warship, this becomes an argument for attacking radars, generators, cooling intakes and the electrical distribution that keeps the system firing. A laser that cannot shed heat becomes a laser that must pause.
Use mixed threat packages
The most dangerous raids will combine drones, missiles and decoys. Lasers may deal efficiently with the cheaper layer, but the defender’s missiles and guns remain finite. A sophisticated attacker will attempt to compel the defender to spend its missiles anyway—using the laser layer to occupy attention and dwell time while more stressing targets arrive.
The balance-sheet: why Dragonfire still matters
These counter-measures do not negate Dragonfire’s value. They clarify it. A laser is not a magical shield; it is a new item on the defender’s ledger. It reduces the marginal cost of defeating some threats, under some conditions, and she provides new options—particularly against drones and sensor-dependent systems.
Its deeper significance is that it is part of a shift in air and missile defence thinking. The question is no longer whether a warship can survive a single high-end missile. It is whether she can endure repeated, inexpensive attacks without being bled dry by her own defensive expenditure. Dragonfire, like the American naval laser path and Israel’s rapid move towards operational laser air defence, speaks to that economic pressure. Israel’s Iron Beam programme—reported as having completed testing and moving into operational use—has been framed explicitly as a low-cost complement to interceptor-based layered defence, underscoring the same cost logic that animates Dragonfire.
If the Royal Navy can field Dragonfire reliably, integrate it into doctrine and accept its limitations honestly, she may gain something that is quietly decisive—staying power. That is not as dramatic as the talk of science fiction, but it is the sort of advantage that wins real wars.