Trump’s CNO Nominee Wants to Make Naval Laser Weapons Great Again
“If confirmed, I will make that a priority.”
President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the US Navy’s top officer wants to finally make the service’s vision of shipboard high-energy laser weapons a reality.
During a Senate Armed Services committee hearing on July 24, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) urged Navy Adm. Daryl Caudle — the current head of US Fleet Forces Command and Trump’s pick for Chief of Naval Operations — to “pay attention to the subject” of directed energy weapons as a cost-effective countermeasure against hostile drones and missiles.
“The prior administration grossly underfunded directed energy,” King, who has consistently pushed for greater investment in the technology, told Caudle. “I hope that’s something you will look at carefully and support, because I think that’s the future of naval warfare.”
Caudle response was unequivocal.
“Senator, my master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School back in 1990 through 1992 was in directed energy. My thesis was on high-powered lasers,” Caudle said. "I've not seen the Navy do an adequate amount of effort translating the research and development into shipboard use.”
“We have the one installed on [USS] Preble, which is not enough,” he continued, referencing the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system. “If confirmed, I will make that a priority, because it is the infinite magazine, if you will, especially against certain targets.”
Read Adm. Caudle’s 1992 Naval Postgraduate School thesis:
Caudle’s enthusiasm for directed energy isn’t new. At the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium in January, the notoriously no-nonsense admiral told reporters that the sea service should be "embarrassed" it hadn’t yet managed to scale shipboard laser weapons across the surface fleet.
“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,” Caudle said, per Breaking Defense. “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.”
“I just think sometimes something can stare us right in the face, but we just don’t go do it,” he added. “Directed energy is one of those things that either industry, politically, leadership — we’re just not on the same page of getting behind it with a sense of urgency and making it ready to go.”
Caudle’s nomination comes at a pivotal moment for the Navy’s laser weapon ambitions. The Red Sea campaign against Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen has laid bare the cost and capacity limits of relying on expensive munitions like the $2 million Standard Missile-2 to intercept low-cost drones. Laser weapons, with their promise of renewable “infinite magazines” and a relatively low cost-per-shot, offer a tempting alternative.
Caudle’s stance on naval laser weapons stands in stark contrast to the caution and skepticism shown by the current acting CNO, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James Kilby, in recent months.
“It’s for me not to buy something that doesn’t work, so I need to test it and make sure it’s actually actionable. I suspect it is,” Kilby told reporters at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space symposium in April. “Preble will help me there, as well the work [the Office of Naval Research] and stuff are doing … I don't want to abandon it, but I’m not ready to go all in yet on buying these things until I have a relatively sure output in an action.”
Indeed, Kilby revealed during a House Appropriations Committee hearing the following May that the HELIOS weapon system installed aboard the Japan-based Preble had not yet achieved its full 60-kilowatt power output during recent testing.
“We had some problems during testing, but now we’re up to one-third of the power and we’re going to continue to test the weapon system to make sure it works,” Kilby told lawmakers.
The US Navy’s laser weapon efforts have been inching towards an operational reality for more than a decade since the service first unveiled the 30 kw AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System (also known as the XN-1 LaWS) aboard the amphibious transport dock USS Ponce back in 2014. But despite the high-profile at-sea tests of subsequent laser weapon demonstrators, the service has still yet to field the systems widely.
The Navy requested $429.8 million as part of its fiscal year 2026 budget request for various directed energy-related projects, according to data collected by defense market intelligence group Obviant, including $46 million in mandatory funding through the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” reconciliation bill for HELIOS research and development and $15 million for the High Energy Laser Counter ASCM Project (HELCAP) project that’s aimed at building a laser weapon to take down incoming cruise missiles. In addition, the service awarded defense contractor Coherent Aerospace & Defense a $29.9 million contract in June to develop a 400 kw laser weapon system as part of its secretive SONGBOW project.
But despite the Navy’s continued investment in laser R&D, actual procurement remains minimal. According to Navy budget documents, the service requested just $3 million in procurement dollars for laser weapons in fiscal year 2026, mostly for spare parts to sustain the Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy (ODIN) laser dazzlers currently installed aboard eight Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. At the moment, the service’s approach appears to reflect Kilby’s reticence to pull the trigger on a major purchase until the technology is more proven.
The tension between promise and proof has long plagued military laser development; as directed energy skeptics frequently joke, “lasers are X years in the future — and always will be.” But that strategic calculus is shifting. With adversaries increasingly embracing low-cost weaponized drones to menace US troops around the world, the Navy’s current missile-heavy layered defense model is looking unsustainably expensive and limited by magazine depth. Caudle’s emphasis on infinite magazines reflects a growing view in defense circles (at least, in the Navy) that directed energy is now a necessary part of building a cost-effective kill chain for the drone-saturated conflicts of the future.
If confirmed, Caudle will face the critical test of not just advocating for directed energy, but turning decades of R&D into fleet-wide capability. And his promise is a simple one: no more excuses, no more delays — it’s laser time.
Considering the Israeli’s are over coming atmospheric variables, I sure we are too. As far as tracking a drone in rough seas for the 2-3 sec shot, tanks and jets can hold target lock while bobbing and weaving, I’m ships can.
Good news .