The ground control station was part of a multiyear effort that took place aboard Bush during multiple ship maintenance stints and between deployments, Naval Air Systems Command, or NAVAIR, said.

Along with the required software and hardware, the drone nerve center features the first fully operational and integrated unmanned carrier aviation mission control system that the command says is critical to using the Stingray in operations.

Bush will conduct at-sea testing of the center early next year, according to NAVAIR.

The control station is the latest step toward getting the Stingray into the fleet, where it will refuel fighter jets midflight, helping the sea service’s strike arm to stay airborne longer — a capability that would be particularly helpful should war with China break out in the watery expanse of the West Pacific.

Standing up the Bush’s drone control room “lays the foundation” for how the Navy will operate and control unmanned aircraft, Unmanned Carrier Aviation (PMA-268) Program Manager Capt. Daniel Fucito said in a statement.

While such systems will initially support the Stingray, they will also be used for other services’ unmanned systems, such as the Air Force’s collaborative combat aircraft program, which seeks to pair air drones with unmanned aircraft in a so-called “air wing of the future.”

Such systems are also being planned for installation aboard fellow carriers Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan beginning in fiscal 2025, according to NAVAIR.

The Iranian attack on Saturday, less than two weeks after a suspected Israeli strike in Syria that killed two Iranian generals in an Iranian consular building, marked the first time Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel, despite decades of enmity dating back to the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

An Israeli military spokesman said that 99% of the drones and missiles launched by Iran were intercepted.

Part of that success rate had to do with the U.S. forces who aided the Israelis in taking out the airborne threats.

From the Mediterranean Sea, the Navy destroyers Carney and Arleigh Burke shot down multiple ballistic missiles in the attack, according to a defense official and media reports.

Carney has become a workhorse of the Navy in recent months and has been crucial to shooting down missile and drone attacks over the Red Sea sent by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen since October.

The ship left the Middle Eastern waters of U.S. Central Command earlier this month and entered the Mediterranean. Officials at the time declined to say why it was on the move.

Meanwhile, White House officials confirmed that the Air Force’s 494th and 355th fighter squadrons also played a role in Israel’s defense, racking up dozens of aerial takedowns.

President Joe Biden reached out to the squadrons to personally express his thanks for “their extraordinary airmanship and skill that was displayed throughout this multi-hour engagement.”

A Patriot missile defense battery based in Irbil, Iraq, also shot down Iranian weapons, officials told journalists.

This weekend’s attack came not only from Iranian territory, but also from proxies in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, officials said.

What comes next remains unclear.

Iran had about 150 ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel from Iranian territory, and appears to have used up most of that current stockpile in its weekend attack, retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, the former head of U.S. Central Command, said Monday.

McKenzie discussed the attack in a panel discussion with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a Washington-based think tank and lobbying group.

McKenzie argued that Iran’s expenditure of those 150 long-range missiles, out of a total ballistic missile stockpile of about 3,000, showed that Iran’s barrage on Israel “was a maximum effort. It was an indiscriminate effort.”

The U.S. and its partners in the region are easily able to track when Iran brings its ballistic missiles out of storage and positions them on launch pads, he said.

When Iran launches, deep space sensors detect that immediately, he said. Radars in the region then catch when any missiles break the radar plane, he said.

Especially given the distance involved, “it is hard for Iran to generate a bolt from the blue against Israel,” McKenzie said.

World leaders are urging Israel not to retaliate after Iran launched an attack involving hundreds of drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron told the BBC on Monday the U.K. does not support a retaliatory strike, while French President Emmanuel Macron said Paris will try to “convince Israel that we must not respond by escalating.”

Iran launched its first-ever direct assault on Israel Saturday, less than two weeks after a suspected Israeli strike in Syria killed two Iranian generals in an Iranian consular building.

An Israeli military spokesman said Sunday that Iran and its proxies had fired more than 300 ballistic missiles, drones and cruise missiles at Israel, but that 99 percent of them were intercepted.

“At my direction, to support the defense of Israel, the U.S. military moved aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region over the course of the past week,” President Joe Biden said in a statement late Saturday. “Thanks to these deployments and the extraordinary skill of our servicemembers, we helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a statement said the U.S. took out dozens of the attacks but did not provide details on ships or aircraft involved in the operation that commanders had been preparing for over the past two weeks.

“We condemn these reckless and unprecedented attacks by Iran and its proxies, and we call on Iran to immediately halt any further attacks, including from its proxy forces, and to deescalate tensions,” Austin said. “We do not seek conflict with Iran, but we will not hesitate to act to protect our forces and support the defense of Israel.”

With regional tensions at their highest since the Israel-Hamas war began six months ago, Biden pledged on Saturday that American support for Israel’s defense against attacks by Iran and its proxies is “ironclad.” The attack marked the first time Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel, risking a wider regional conflict.

Biden made clear in a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. would not participate in any offensive action against Iran, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to publicly discuss the private conversation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The command did not identify the ship involved, and multiple Navy destroyers have spent recent months there intercepting drones and missiles on a near-daily basis that were fired by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Wednesday’s incident took place over 20 minutes starting at 2 a.m. local time, according to CENTCOM.

The warship took the drones out in self-defense, and no injuries or damage were reported to U.S. and coalition ships there.

“It was determined these weapons presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and U.S. Navy ships in the region,” CENTCOM said in a statement. “These actions are taken to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for U.S. Navy and merchant vessels.”

The attack came after a three-day lull in Houthi attacks reported by CENTCOM, a respite from the near-daily firing of weapons by Houthis, and Navy strikes against Houthis weapons on the ground in Yemen.

Chief Fire Controlman (Aegis) Bryce Steven Pedicini faces eight espionage charge specifications for alleged crimes that occurred between November 2022 and May, according to a copy of his charge sheet obtained by Navy Times.

Pedicini is the first sailor to be charged with espionage in at least the past five years, according to the Navy’s Office of the Judge Advocate General

Currently assigned to the Japan-based destroyer Higgins, Pedicini has been held in pre-trial confinement since May, according to Navy records.

He could not be reached for comment, and the Navy’s defense attorney office did not respond to a Navy Times request for comment from his appointed attorney.

Pedicini is accused of delivering a classified national defense document to “a citizen and employee of a foreign government” on Nov. 22, 2022, in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and that the chief had “reason to believe that it would be used to the injury of the United States and the advantage of a foreign nation,” his charge sheet states.

The charge sheet does not state which foreign nation Pedicini allegedly worked with.

But the chief is also accused of delivering similar classified information to a foreign contact seven other times, with the most recent alleged occurrence taking place on May 17 in Yokosuka, Japan.

Two days later, on May 19, Pedicini was placed in pre-trial confinement, according to his charge sheet.

Pedicini is also accused of wrongly transporting information he believed to be classified, and for processing material he believed to be classified “on a system that was not approved for classified material” in May in Yokosuka, his charge sheet states.

Prosecutors also allege he failed to report a foreign contact in Yokosuka in April, and that he failed “to report solicitation of classified information by an unauthorized person.”

Pedicini is also accused of taking a personal electronic device into a secure room aboard Barge APL-67 in Yokosuka in May, according to his charge sheet.

He also faces multiple charge specifications for communicating defense information to foreign contacts from December 2022 to May in Hampton Roads.

Naval Surface Forces declined further comment on the ongoing case.

Pedicini had a motions hearing scheduled for Wednesday of this week, and officials have not said when his trial is scheduled to begin.

Charges were brought against the chief in January, and the head of Naval Surface Forces, Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, is the convening authority in the case.

A Tennessee native, Pedicini enlisted in 2008 and advanced to chief in 2022, according to his service record.

He reported to Higgins in April and was also assigned to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center in Norfolk, Virginia, during the time of his alleged crimes.

Pedicini also served aboard the destroyers Curtis Wilbur and McFaul earlier his career.

“This is not a contractor-owned, contractor-operated capability, but this is a uniformed capability that we’ll be able to own [and] operate unmanned capabilities that can be employed within particular spaces,” Adm. Samuel Paparo said.

The Navy created its first unit dedicated to surface drones, Unmanned Surface Vessel Division 1, in 2022.

Paparo also said the Navy will launch Integrated Battle Problem 24.1 in March, which will pair manned and unmanned capabilities.

He mentioned that prior exercises involved drones traveling 50,000 miles over seven months, as well as experiments involving the placement of SM-6 missile launchers on large surface drones.

Paparo also called the Navy’s unmanned work in various fleet commands “complementary battle labs” that are all pushing toward the same goal of honing unmanned and autonomous operations.

A primary goal of the work is to not unnecessarily risk sailor lives, he said.

“Don’t send a human being to do something dangerous that a machine can do better, faster and more cheaply,” Paparo said. “Ensure that you have the means of control.”

He noted much of this work is done quietly “for the simple reason that we don’t want to expose it to an adversary that would emplace a counter to that capability.”

“A key principle within warfare is the element of operational security,” Paparo said. “So for most exquisite capabilities, if I’m doing my job, you won’t be knowing about it.”

He began his keynote speech with a grim warning about the state of the globe. “The world is increasingly descending into chaos and disorder, and from Europe to the Middle East to the Pacific, we’re seeing significant shifts in state behaviors, and they are not random,” he said.

“At a recent state visit to Moscow, the [People’s Republic of China] president, I won’t utter his name, was overheard telling the Russian president that right now, there are changes the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years, and we are the ones driving those changes together,” Paparo said. “The changes referenced are challenges to our security, our freedom and our well-being.”

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, the warships Carney, Gravely, Laboon, Mason and Thomas Hudner have destroyed more than 70 drones and seven Houthi cruise missiles, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti said.

Anti-ship ballistic missiles are designed to hit vessels like Navy destroyers, and their deployment by the Houthis against military and commercial ships in the region is believed to be the first time such munitions have been used in a conflict.

In recent months, the Navy has also pounded Houthi positions in Yemen, eliminating missiles and kamikaze drones that are still on the ground but prepared to fire.

“And that’s really just the start of what our Navy is doing around the world,” Franchetti said. “We can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

She also noted the Navy is being challenged in the world’s waters to a level that hasn’t been seen since World War II.

“For the first time since World War II, we no longer operate from a maritime sanctuary against competitors who cannot threaten us today,” she said. “Sea control is neither guaranteed nor freely given.”

The intercepts came on the same day that U.S. forces began air strikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria in response to Sunday’s fatal drone attack that killed three American soldiers.

At about 9:20 p.m. local time Friday, the Navy destroyer Laboon and F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower took out seven Houthi drones over the Red Sea.

“There were no injuries or damages reported,” CENTCOM said in a statement. “These actions will product freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for U.S. Navy vessels and merchant vessels.”

On Friday afternoon, CENTCOM forces took out four Houthi drones that were prepared to launch, after determining “they presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and the U.S. Navy ships in the region.

Friday morning, the destroyer Carney shot down a drone over the Gulf of Aden.

Navy warships and commercial ships have regularly been fired upon by Houthis in Yemen since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, and the attacks have continued even after the United States and allies began bombing Houthi sites in Yemen last month.

But applause from Vice Adm. Brendan McLane and other leaders has been paired with frustrations that ships like the Carney, Gravely, Mason, Laboon and Thomas Hudner are fighting without a potential key asset: the long-planned and ever-elusive laser.

High-energy lasers, or HELs, and high-power microwaves, or HPMs, would offer the surface fleet another weapon for countering overhead threats, including unmanned aerial vehicles and rockets. Despite decades of research and development, as well as billions of dollars spent for a threat like the one the Navy now faces in the Red Sea, such systems have yet to enter the surface fleet and the broader military in a meaningful way, according to analysts and service leaders.

McLane called the glacial pace of development “frustrating” in a call with reporters this month.

“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,” McLane told reporters ahead of the Surface Navy Association conference this month. “We’re 10 years down the road, and we still don’t have something we can field?”

To date, only a smattering of ships have laser capabilities on board. Few directed-energy tools have made the successful leap from science fiction to real life, with outside experts and government reviews saying the development of such futuristic weaponry is as challenging as it is worthwhile and potentially game-changing.

Directed energy could complement the panoply of weapons a U.S. destroyer in the Red Sea has at the ready, and their widespread fielding would signal a revolution in military affairs on the level of fighter jets and missiles, according to analysts.

McLane suggested that lasers, including today’s versions, would be helpful in batting down Houthi bombardments.

“Against some of the targets that have been shot, some of the systems that we have can be effective,” he said.

Directed energy could also help crews conserve finite munitions supplies while on station, analysts say. The 60-plus confirmed intercepts of drones and missiles hurtling toward Navy ships and commercial vessels in the Red Sea have largely relied on the Standard Missile-2, or SM-2, although service officials have declined to say precisely what was fired in each engagement.

‘The way of the future’

The Defense Department is spending on average $1 billion annually to develop HEL and HPM weapons, with the goal of deploying them aboard ground vehicles, aircraft and ships. It requested at least $669 million in fiscal 2023 for unclassified research, testing and evaluation, and another $345 million for unclassified procurement.

But bridging the so-called valley of death — the lag between private development and the military procuring and fielding technology — has proved difficult, according to the Government Accountability Office. 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 an April report by 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.

Outside analysts note that developing such capabilities is not easy. The full realization of deploying directed-energy weapons is “something of a holy grail,” according to Eric Wertheim, an author, defense consult and U.S. Naval Institute columnist.

The lack of HEL or HPM systems aboard ships is less of an acquisition failure, he said, and more of a hardware- and software-based jigsaw puzzle left unsolved.

Finding a power source for directed-energy weapons as well as space for such systems on board a ship that is full of energy-hungry sensors and combat management systems is a serious roadblock, he said.

While lasers can punch holes through a variety of material, certain atmospheric conditions, such as fog or wind, can impede or distort the shot. High-power microwaves can have near-instant frying effects on electronic guts, but they’re less effective at greater ranges.

“It’s incredibly challenging technologically, and the technology is always a step, or a few steps, away from where we would like it to be,” Wertheim said in an interview. “We’re pushing the barriers, in many ways, along with our allies, and I think that our adversaries are very focused on overwhelming the defenses, as you see in the Red Sea right now.”

Destroyers have already featured Lockheed Martin’s High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) and the Navy’s own Optical Dazzling Interdictor. The former was specifically designed to interdict drones and small, agile boats — the kind of threats with which Houthi militants are peppering shipping channels.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told reporters at the Surface Navy Association’s conference that he understands McLane’s vexation. He also said the HELIOS system, installed on the destroyer Preble in 2022, is now “a bit beyond” the experimentation phase and primed for growth.

“This is the way of the future,” Del Toro said, “and we are going to be looking in the fiscal years ’26, ’27 and into the [five-year] Future Years Defense Program on how to accelerate deployment of HELIOS and HELIOS-like capabilities on our DDG-51 [Arleigh Burke-class destroyer] platforms.”

The Navy tested a high-energy laser on another type of vessel, the amphibious transport dock Portland, in 2020 and 2021. The ship has more available power to support larger laser weapons, and it went on to disable targets in the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, the service said.

The good, the bad and the trade-offs

Laser and microwave setups have their respective strengths and weaknesses. Neither requires mechanical reloading like a rifle or a tank; that’s particularly important in a wartime scenario, when Navy resupply lines would be under threat.

However, they do have limits.

“Lasers are pretty effective, but they take time,” Bryan Clark, who leads the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute think tank, said in an interview. “You’ve got to have the laser shoot the drone for several seconds, which means it can only shoot one at a time.”

To be successful, especially in a swarm scenario with multiple kinds of threats overhead, Clark said, a ship’s sensors would have to differentiate between higher-end targets that demand a kinetic hit and lower-end targets that a laser can manage. The crew aboard the Carney in December intercepted more than a dozen drones that U.S. Central Command described as a “wave” originating from Yemen.

“I want to use an SM-2 to shoot down the C-802 [missile] or maybe a bigger, more dangerous drone,” said Clark, who in years past served as a special assistant to the chief of naval operations. “But I don’t want to use an SM-2 to shoot down smaller, less capable drones.”

Dispatching one-way attack drones that often use cheap, off-the-shelf parts presents an uncomfortable cost-benefit analysis for the Navy. Sophisticated interceptors used by the U.S. can cost millions of dollars each, while a Houthi drone furnished by Iran, like the Shahed and its derivatives, can cost a few thousand.

The French Navy has defended its use of Aster 15 missiles to destroy drones, saying what mattered was not the cost of the ordnance but rather the value of ships and people saved from the attack.

Indeed, a ship’s captain must be free to use whichever weapons keep the ship and crew safe, multiple retired surface warfare officers told Navy Times.

Munitions and more

Military officials and outside observers see directed energy as a way to save resources and reduce strain on munitions manufacturers. But fielding such futuristic systems will require buy-in by fleet commanders who are used to the tried-and-true conventional arms they have handled for years.

“The threat is constantly adapting. There are some threats that lasers are very well suited for, and some [for which] you might want to have more hard-kill missile defense,” Wertheim said. “We’re going to have a layered defense that will hopefully include directed energy, and I think we’re seeing that. The directed energy percentage will increase over time.”

“There are going to be situations where you can’t shoot the archer, so to speak,” he added. “That’s always the optimal solution — take out the launchers before they launch. But when you can’t do that, then directed energy has potential.”

The Navy understands the need to increase its conventional weapons inventory and is attempting to do so with industry’s assistance, according to Rear Adm. Fred Pyle, the director of surface warfare on the chief of naval operations’ staff. But the service is also on the lookout for “cost-effective ways to neutralize threats,” he said at the SNA conference.

The Navy’s fiscal 2024 budget blueprint, totaling $255.8 billion, up 4.5% from the year prior, backed multiyear procurements for four long-range weapons: the Standard Missile, the Naval Strike Missile, the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile and the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile.

Firing a directed-energy weapon is advertised as costing pennies to the dollar when compared to a missile or other traditional weapon. The DragonFire laser, developed by British industry and government, typically costs less than £10 (U.S. $13) per shot, according to the Defence Ministry.

But tapping contractors to build laser or microwave systems, installing them aboard ships, training crews to use them, and then operating them is less cut and dry.

“We continue to invest in directed-energy capability — it’s hard,” said Pyle, who helps shepherd money for the development and purchase of new ships and their weapons.

“[Surface warfare officer] boss [McLane] has talked about this. We’re still working on that technology,” he added. “It requires space, weight, power and cooling, which can be a challenge on our current surface combatants.”

In the early morning hours local time, Carney “successfully engaged 14 unmanned aerial systems launched as a drone wave from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen,” the command said in a brief statement. “The [drones] were assessed to be one-way attack drones and were shot down with no damage to ships in the area or reported injuries. Regional Red Sea partners were alerted to the threat.”

CENTCOM officials did not immediately clarify Saturday if Carney was believed to have been the target of the attack drones, but in other recent incidents involving Carney and fellow warship Mason, CENTCOM said it was unclear if the American ships were the targets of the drones, but that the destroyers shot the drones down in self-defense.

Carney spent a reported nine hours shooting down a drone and missile barrage fired by Houthi areas of Yemen toward Israel on Oct. 19.

Saturday’s action comes as commercial ships transiting the vital economic sea lane continue to come under attack by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in nearby Yemen.

On Friday afternoon, the Mason responded to a mayday call from the Liberian-flagged MV Palatium 3 which was struck by two Houthi ballistic missiles.

Two other commercial vessels in the Red Sea were also attacked Friday, according to CENTCOM, and no injuries were reported on any of those commercial ships.

“This latest round of attacks is yet another demonstration of the great risk to international shipping caused by these Houthi actions,” the U.S. command said.

Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, the head of CENTCOM, visited Carney earlier this week and brought “over 1,000 pounds of barbecue” for the ship’s hard-working men and women, according to a command statement.

More than 20 Carney sailors also received awards for their recent actions, but the command has yet to provide further information on those awards.