The U.S. Navy has quietly crossed a threshold that once belonged to science fiction, using a high energy laser to burn hostile drones out of the sky instead of meeting them with missiles or gunfire. By concentrating electricity into a focused beam of light, the service is starting to vaporize low cost aerial threats at sea and to rethink how it protects ships in crowded, contested waters.
The new weapon, known as HELIOS, is already proving it can blind, scorch, and ultimately destroy uncrewed aircraft that get too close to American destroyers. I see that shift as more than a flashy technology demo, because it points toward a future in which warships defend themselves with magazines measured in megawatts rather than missile tubes.
From lab concept to drones “zapped” at sea
The clearest sign that this laser era has arrived is the performance of the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Preble, which used its HELIOS system to “zap” four separate drones in a series of live tests. Those shots were not abstract range events, they were part of expanding trials that pushed the laser against realistic uncrewed targets approaching the ship from different angles and ranges. In parallel, the Navy has highlighted a separate successful engagement in which HELIOS, described as a High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance, struck a drone during an operational test of the system’s tracking and engagement chain, a milestone detailed in official Navy reporting.
Those demonstrations cap a progression that began with more experimental efforts like the Office of Naval Research’s The Layered Laser, a multi platform demonstrator that showed how a shipboard beam could track and hit aerial targets, as described in early Laser trials overseen by Warren Duffie Jr of the Office of Naval Research. A separate effort delivered the LOCUST laser defense system to the Palletized Hi Energy Laser project, showing how a compact, pallet mounted weapon could incapacitate a test drone in flight, according to detailed LOCUST accounts.
Inside HELIOS: high energy laser and dazzler in one turret
What makes HELIOS different from earlier prototypes is that it is a solid state, ship integrated weapon that combines a destructive beam with a non lethal dazzler and a surveillance sensor in a single package. The Navy describes HELIOS as a High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance, a mouthful that underscores how the system can both burn through a drone’s airframe and blind its electro optical sensors, as laid out in official HELIOS descriptions. In practice, that means a commander can choose to warn or disable a sensor with a lower power setting, or to dwell the beam long enough on a wing or rotor to cause structural failure.
Public explainers have emphasized that this is not a fragile lab instrument but a ruggedized combat system. One detailed breakdown of the Navy HELIOS architecture, featured in a WON podcast episode, walks through how the beam director, power storage, and cooling loop are arranged to support “war at speed,” a phrase that captures the near instantaneous engagement cycle described in that WON discussion. Other overviews stress that the Helios unit is the Navy’s first truly operational laser weapon with enough stored energy to power an entire neighborhood compressed into a shipboard module, a point driven home in video footage that shows the Helios turret tracking and firing.
USS Preble and the rise of layered shipboard lasers
The destroyer USS Preble sits at the center of this story because it is the first Arleigh Burke class ship documented using HELIOS to engage multiple drones in a single test series. Detailed accounts of the event describe how the USS Preble Used HELIOS Laser To Zap Four Drones In Expanding Testing, validating not just a single lucky shot but repeatable performance. A separate view from the bow of Preble in 2024 shows The HEL installation dominating the forecastle, a visual reminder of how much topside real estate the Navy is now dedicating to directed energy, as captured in imagery of the Preble installation.
Preble is not alone. Earlier, naval leadership began fielding a lower power dazzler known as ODIN on other Arleigh Burke hulls, including the destroyer USS Dewey, which carries the hull number DDG 105, as documented in imagery that shows the ODIN turret on USS Dewey DDG 105. That dazzler is designed to disrupt or damage the cameras on approaching drones rather than physically destroy the airframe, giving commanders a graduated set of options that now stretches from soft kill to hard kill as HELIOS joins the mix.
Cost, power, and the race to higher wattage
What makes these lasers strategically attractive is not just their speed of light engagement but their economics. Traditional surface to air missiles can cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars per shot, a poor trade when the target is a quadcopter that might cost less than a family car. By contrast, HELIOS draws on the ship’s electrical power and can fire as long as generators and cooling systems hold up, a point that Navy officials have stressed in briefings and that is echoed in public commentary describing how the battlefield is going electric.
The Navy is already pushing toward even more powerful systems. A major industrial effort labeled Navy Starts Building 400kW Laser to Fry Drones and Hypersonic Threats aims to field a 400 kilowatt class weapon that can engage not just small drones but also faster, tougher targets, according to program details in the Navy Starts Building initiative. That same reporting frames the project as part of a broader effort titled Laser to Fry Drones and Hypersonic Threats, nested within a larger industrial strategy described as How Washington Is Turning Security Into Manufacturing, which underlines how deeply defense planners are tying directed energy to the U.S. manufacturing base.
Real world testing from the Red Sea to secretive SONGBOW
For all the controlled range shots, the most telling experiments are happening in contested waterways. Officials have acknowledged that the Navy is developing and testing a laser weapon in the Red Sea that can shoot down drones multiple times in a single sortie, a capability described in detail by a senior leader who highlighted how a single shipboard system could take out swarms of 2,000 dollar drones, according to reporting on the Red Sea trials. That same account underscores the allure of shipboard laser defenses that can fire repeatedly without leaving debris, a contrast to missile intercepts that often shower fragments into busy shipping lanes.
Behind the scenes, the Navy has launched a secretive effort known as SONGBOW, which is set to run through January 2027 if all phases are completed and is described as part of the service’s strategy to build layered defenses using directed energy, according to program details on SONGBOW. That same documentation notes that Set to run through that period, SONGBOW is one piece of a broader Navy plan that assumes the battlefield is going electric, with lasers, high power microwaves, and other directed energy systems forming a web of overlapping defenses around surface groups.
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