The Navy’s Chief Laser Weapon is Operating at Just One-Third Power, Acting CNO Says
“We had some problems during testing."
The US Navy’s primary high-energy laser weapon has a power problem, according to the service’s acting top officer, casting new doubt on the branch’s immediate directed energy ambitions.
Speaking to lawmakers during a House Appropriations Committee hearing on May 14, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James Kilby revealed that the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) weapon system installed aboard the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Preble had yet to hit its advertised maximum power output of 60 kilowatts during 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 said in response to a question from Rep. John Carter (R-Tex) regarding the Navy’s adoption of laser weapons help to its conserve missile stockpiles.
At roughly 20 kw, the HELIOS is currently underperforming even earlier shipboard laser systems like the 30 kw AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System, also known as the XN-1 LaWS, which the Navy declared ready for a fight aboard the USS Ponce back in 2014. (The Ponce was decommissioned in 2017 and the LaWS moved to the amphibious transport dock USS Portland for continued testing.)
Kilby went on to emphasize to lawmakers that he had “buyer’s remorse” regarding his past work on the Navy’s laser weapon efforts, echoing previous comments to reporters at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space symposium in early April.
“In my last life as an N9” — the deputy CNO for warfighting requirements and capabilities – “I was focused on lasers between 500 kilowatts and 1 megawatt because that's what it takes to knock down an anti-ship cruise missile,” Kilby told lawmakers. “I wish I’d been a little bit more thoughtful and taken a lesser power weapon that would have been capable against [drones].”
Kilby didn’t specify which specific laser weapon initiative he was referencing, but he was likely referring to the unnamed 500 kw system that defense giant Lockheed Martin unveiled as part of the US Defense Department’s High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative (HELSI) back in July 2023.
The HELIOS’s newly-revealed inability to reach its target output during testing helps explain Kilby’s reticence to fully endorse laser weapons to reporters at Sea-Air-Space in April when asked to respond to complaints from “embarrassed” Navy leaders about the service’s perceived slowness in fielding such systems.
“There’s a push in activity. 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 said at the time. “Preble will help me there, as well the work ONR [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.”
It’s unclear what the specific problems that Kilby mentioned to lawmakers are, or whether they are directly related to HELIOS’s power struggles. And the details of the power issue are also unclear. Is the challenge with the HELIOS array itself, or with the fundamental power generation capabilities of the Preble?
When it comes to laser weapons, power issues have been top of mind for the Navy for years. Back in 2019, the Navy’s then-surface warfare boss Rear Adm. Ron Boxall declared that the service’s fleet “are out of Schlitz with regard to power.” The problem, he said, was that the Navy’s new Flight III Arleigh Burke destroyers were already strapped for juice powering their new AN/SPY-6 Air and Missile Defense Radar: “We used a lot of power for that and we don’t have as much extra for additional functions.”
The Preble, a Flight IIA Arleigh Burke variant, doesn’t have the same power demands as those Flight III vessels. But the issues that arose during testing suggest that energy availability or management could still be a limiting factor for fielding operational laser weapons — a challenge that could potentially influence the Navy’s decision to invest in subsequent HELIOS buys despite growing pressure from both commanders and lawmakers to field shipboard laser weapons as soon as possible.
According to federal contacting data analyzed by defense market intelligence group Obviant, the Navy awarded a contract with a $1.1 billion ceiling to Lockheed Martin back in 2018 to deliver at least two HELIOS test units to the service, one for installation on a destroyer and another for ground testing, with an option of delivering an additional 12 production units through 2027.
Despite HELIOS’s current limitations, Kilby emphasized that the Navy is not giving up on shipboard lasers.
“In the meantime, we’re going to pursue that testing on the HELIOS,” he told lawmakers.