In a photo first shared with C4ISRNET, the prototype is seen just below the surface of the water, with one fin and part of its almond-shaped body breaking through. The grey unmanned underwater vehicle — considered to be “extra large,” in military parlance — dwarfs the boat trailing it as well as the person aboard.

Those working on the secretive project declined to provide specific measurements about its size, but said the UUV is modular. It was separated into pieces on the East Coast and shipped cross-country where “a small team was able to reassemble the vehicle on a standard Navy concrete pier using only common support equipment and a single crane,” according to Brian Theobald, a principal investigator and chief engineer at Northrop.

“I think it is striking in its size and scale, even for those folks that have been there throughout the design process,” he said in an interview May 2. “We see everything in model-based views, in CAD, et cetera, and it’s not until you see it actually built, full scale, that it truly hits home.”

Its first dunk and subsequent trials off the coast of California revealed “no leaks or ground faults or other build issues,” he added. “I think we can all relate: Water is going to go into every single crevice and place that it can get to.”

Northrop’s offering is years in the making. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 2020 kicked off the program with the thought of creating a large underwater drone that can operate independently of manned vessels and ports once underway. It was also meant to shepherd critical tech for a new class of what the agency called “payload-capable UUVs.”

Northrop last month teased its prototype during the Sea-Air-Space naval conference in Maryland. The image the company shared was darkened and showed little more than its rounded nose and glider-like body.

Key considerations for Manta Ray development include threat detection, classification and communications capabilities, high-efficiency propulsion systems, and the ability to withstand the taxes of undersea environments. Having a drone that can survive on its own for protracted periods of time would reduce logistical demands and free up manpower.

“The design goal is to be completely autonomous, requiring little human interaction or maintenance to achieve its mission goals,” Joseph Deane, Northrop’s Manta Ray program manager, said in an interview. “What makes it stand out is its low power usage, the ability to go very long distances, the autonomous aspect of it, to operate without human interaction for long periods of time. Those capabilities don’t exist right now.”

The Department of Defense is increasingly interested in uncrewed technologies and their battlefield application. The Navy is seeking to establish a so-called hybrid fleet, empowering sailors and Marines with smart machinery and the sensors or weapons they carry. The Manta Ray prototype features multiple bays for payloads of different types and sizes.

Defense News previously reported the service was fleshing out its manned-unmanned teams in three phases: prototyping and experimenting from fiscal 2024 to 2028; buying and using in fiscal 2029 through 2033; and becoming fully operational in the years thereafter.

The Navy and DARPA are expected to discuss next steps for the Manta Ray program, including additional testing and potential technology transfers.

U.S.-based Saildrone and Thales Australia, a division of France-based Thales Group, on April 8 said they would outfit the former’s Surveyor unmanned surface vessels with the latter’s BlueSentry towed arrays capable of detecting and classifying crafts on or below the waves.

The announcement coincided with the start of the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference here.

The Department of Defense has long sought an unmanned or autonomous ability to surveil stealthy submersibles; DARPA, for example, more than a decade ago launched the Anti-Submarine Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel effort. Navy leadership has since advocated for a hybrid fleet, with sailors and Marines augmented by smart machines and the equipment they carry.

Defense News last year reported the Navy pictured its manned-unmanned fleet maturing in three phases: prototyping and experimenting from fiscal 2024 to 2028; buying and using in fiscal 2029 through 2033; and becoming fully operational in the years thereafter.

Troy Stephen, vice president of underwater systems at Thales Australia and New Zealand, in a statement said the Surveyor “offers a unique capability within the field of USVs,” adding that his team looks forward to contributing to its “impressive maritime domain awareness” capabilities. Maritime domain awareness provides a deep understanding of the potential repercussions of what’s happening on, below or near the water.

“Thales Australia has a proud history of exporting specialized sonar and acoustic products in support of one of our closest allies, the United States,” Stephen said. “Over two decades, these products have spanned the fields of seismic survey to mine warfare and, more recently, surface ship anti-submarine warfare.”

A Surveyor USV weighs 15 tons and stretches 65 feet. It sports an aluminum hull and keel manufactured by Austal USA.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Christopher Mahoney viewed Surveyor construction last month during shipbuilding tours along the Gulf Coast.

“Using unmanned assets helps put more players on the field by freeing up manned assets for more specific and important tasks,” Franchetti said in a statement at the time. “It’s good to see high tech industry partnering with the traditional shipbuilding industrial base to rapidly deliver cutting-edge products at scale.”

Asked for potential spending details, a Naval Information Warfare Systems Command spokesperson said the budget is considered controlled unclassified information, or CUI, “and as such, we are unable to provide the requested information at this time.” The Navy sought at least $192 million in FY24 and secured $226 million in FY23.

Project Overmatch represents the service’s contribution to the Defense Department’s multibillion-dollar connectivity campaign known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control. Military leaders have shared few specifics about its maturation since inception in 2020, citing Russian and Chinese monitoring. It was not clear why information could be distributed in past fiscal years but not the upcoming one.

Rear Adm. Ben Reynolds, the Navy’s deputy assistant secretary for the budget, previously told reporters at the Pentagon that Project Overmatch funding would be applied to software development and “some hardware that goes on our ships, goes into our numbered fleets, and then provides them the capability to operate distributed.”

“We remain committed to our Overmatch capabilities,” Reynolds added. “The ability to move information across a distributed fleet? That’s very important.”

At least three carrier strike groups already have Project Overmatch capabilities aboard, C4ISRNET previously reported. While a spokesperson at the time declined to the name the groups, the individual said rollout to carrier strike groups, amphibious ready groups and maritime operation centers was “way ahead” of an FY25 mandate from the chief of naval operations.

Navy officials have said Project Overmatch’s injection into the fleet will first focus on the Indo-Pacific region, where Washington may butt heads with Beijing and where interception and jamming jeopardize the network activities. Trials with the advanced technology kicked off last year with the Carl Vinson carrier strike group off California.

Army Gen. Michael Kurilla told lawmakers on March 7 that he would “love” to have the Navy deploy more directed-energy arms capable of downing drones. Having supplemental directed energy on hand, he added, would also mean expending fewer U.S. missiles, which can cost millions of dollars a pop. Iranian drones being funneled to extremist groups can cost thousands of dollars each.

“The bigger concern is if you start talking about swarms. We need to continue to invest in things like high-power microwave to be able to counter a drone swarm that is coming at you,” Kurilla said during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington. “Nothing is 100%. At some point the law of statistics will come up. You have to have a layered defense.”

High-energy lasers and microwave weapons are capable of zapping overhead threats in ways dissimilar to traditional munitions and at a fraction of the cost. Lasers can fire at the speed of light and punch holes through material, while microwaves can fry electronics at a distance, rendering tech obsolete. Both are considered a critical element of layered defense, or having multiple countermeasures ready to thwart different threats in different situations.

The Defense Department has for decades pitched money into directed-energy weapons, an average $1 billion annually in the past three years, according to the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog.

At least 31 directed-energy initiatives are underway across the department, with some more mature than others. Among them are Lockheed Martin’s High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance, or HELIOS, installed aboard the Navy destroyer Preble in 2022, and Epirus’ Leonidas, delivered to the Army in 2023 in furtherance of its Indirect Fire Protection Capability.

Bringing such systems to fruition — let alone mass production — has proven tricky. Aside from their technological complexity, laser- and microwave-based weaponry demand precious components and materials such as germanium and gallium.

Kurilla on Wednesday said the Army “sent us some directed-energy mobile short-range air defense” that are being experimented with. He provided no details about initial results. The service dispatched four Stryker-mounted 50-kilowatt laser prototypes in February, Breaking Defense reported.

Militants across the Greater Middle East have in recent months conducted more than 175 attacks on U.S. and allied forces. A drone strike in Jordan, at the Tower 22 installation near al-Tanf garrison, killed three troops in January. A Houthi missile attack on a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden this month killed three crew members, as well, and forced an evacuation of the vessel.

“This is not the same central region as last year,” Kurilla said. “Iran’s expansive network of proxies is equipped with advanced, sophisticated weaponry, and threatens some of the most vital terrain in the world with global and U.S. implications.”

Adm. Samuel Paparo, recognizing the tune, smiled as he grabbed the microphone. He then quipped about past lives and “a lot of illegal things” that took place as he came of age in the 1980s.

Times have since changed, and some have found religion in the military, Paparo said. And, much like the times, the demands of a modern-day warrior with a mean, mean stride are constantly evolving.

“We are in the middle of another epochal change,” he said. “And that is the dawn — and I do mean the dawn — of the information age.”

As the U.S. Defense Department prepares for potential confrontations with Russia or China and juggles counterterrorism operations in the Greater Middle East and Africa, it’s emphasizing data: how it’s collected; how it’s shared; and how it can be weaponized. But by some of the department’s own measures, including the 2023 Strategy for Operations in the Information Environment, it is falling behind.

State actors and extremist groups alike have long exploited the information ecosystem in an attempt to distort or degrade U.S. standing. Operating online and below the threshold of armed conflict ducks the consequences of physical battles, where personnel levels, accumulated stockpiles and technology budgets can make all the difference.

The Navy in November published a 14-page document laying out how it plans to get up to speed, arguing neither ship nor torpedo alone will strike the decisive blow in future fights. Rather, it stated, a marriage of traditional munitions and exquisite software will win the day.

The thinking was prominent at the AFCEA- and U.S. Naval Institute-hosted West confab, where Paparo and other leaders spoke, and where some of the world’s largest defense contractors mingled and hawked their wares. Signs promised secure connectivity. Other screens advertised warrens of computerized pipes and tubes through which findings could flow.

“Who competes best in this — who adapts better, who’s better able to combine data, computing power and [artificial intelligence], and who can win the first battle, likely in space, cyber and the information domain — shall prevail,” Paparo said.

Subs and simulation

The U.S. has sought to invigorate its approach to information warfare, a persuasive brew of public outreach, offensive and defensive electronic capabilities, and cyber operations that can confer advantages before, during and after major events. Rapidly deployable teams of information forces that can shape public perceptions are a must, the Defense Department has said, as is a healthy workforce comprising military and civilian experts.

The Navy in 2022 embedded information warfare specialists aboard submarines to study how their expertise may aid underwater operations. That pilot program is now advancing into a second phase, with information professional officers and cryptologic technicians joining two East Coast subs, the Delaware and the California.

Years prior, the service made information warfare commanders fixtures of carrier strike groups.

“This is the first and the most decisive battle,” said Paparo, who previously told Congress that Indo-Pacific Command, his future post, is capable of wielding deception to alter attitudes and behaviors. “The information age will not necessarily replace some of the more timeless elements of naval combat, maneuver and fires, but will in fact augment them.”

Tenets of information warfare — situational awareness, assured command and control, and the confluence of intelligence and weaponry — have enabled U.S. forces to bat down overhead threats in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden while also assisting retaliatory strikes across the Greater Middle East.

Warships Carney, Gravely, Laboon, Mason and Thomas Hudner have destroyed more than 70 drones and seven cruise missiles since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October. Prior knowledge regarding the armaments and installations of Iran and the Houthi rebel group in Yemen has made it easier, albeit dangerous.

Information warfare “underpins every single warfare mission in the Navy today,” Elizabeth Nashold, the deputy at Naval Information Forces Command, said at the West conference. “You name that mission, and there’s an IW component to it.”

“USS Carney was ready on Day 1,” she added. “We are in an information age, and we are seeing proliferating technologies, and we have to keep up.”

Ensuring sailors are well-versed in information warfare has proved tricky, as the sensitivity of tools employed clashes with the always-alert eyes and ears of Russia and China. The U.S. Navy has for years wanted to flesh out its simulation and gaming environments to bridge the gap, but has run into both engineering and bureaucratic walls.

“A lot of our IW capabilities are at a higher classification level than what we see in the current live, virtual and constructive operating environment,” Nashold said. “The other challenge is really just getting all the different IW capabilities into LVC.”

The Navy plans to introduce 20 information warfare systems into its live, virtual and constructive environments. The first few — focused on cryptology, meteorology and oceanography — will be uploaded in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, according to Nashold. Other information warfare disciplines include communications, cryptology and electronic warfare, or the ability to use the electromagnetic spectrum to sense, defend and communicate.

Additionally, the service is eyeing ashore training facilities in locations where sailors and sea power are concentrated: California, Virginia and Japan.

“They’re basically going to be places where sailors can come and actually train to execute those capabilities,” Nashold said. “Once we get into the environment, our IW sailors can run all of our IW capabilities concurrently, and they can actually innovate and iterate and practice over and over again.”

Safe and secure

The Navy’s inaugural cyber strategy, published late last year, underlined the value of virtual weaponry. Non-kinetic effects — capable of wreaking havoc on electronic guts and subsystems — will prove increasingly potent as militaries adopt interlinked databases and units.

In the U.S., the vision of connecting once-disparate forces across land, air, sea, space and cyberspace is known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control. In China, the weaving of command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to quickly coordinate firepower is known as Multi-Domain Precision Warfare.

The former considers the latter a top-tier national security hazard. Defense Department documents describe Beijing as determined to reorient international power in its favor. Such ambitions can take many forms, economic and narrative among them.

“We all know information is combat power, and really the next fight is an information-domain fight just as much as a physical, kinetic fight,” Jane Rathbun, the Navy’s chief information officer, said at West. “We want to make sure that we provide our sailors and Marines with trustworthy, secure information at the time of need.”

Shuttling intel back-and-forth runs the risk of interception or poisoning. Tampering could go undetected, as well, exposing troops to unnecessary risks down the line.

“The golden rule in the information superiority vision is the right data, the right place, the right time, securely. And the ‘securely’ piece is critically important,” Rathbun said.

The service’s cyber blueprint identifies critical infrastructure — such as bases, far-flung logistics nodes, and food and water supply chains — as a soft underbelly in need of thicker insulation.

The Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, made up of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S., warned in May a Chinese espionage group slipped past digital defenses in Guam and other locations. Microsoft had detected the breach and attributed it to a group known as Volt Typhoon. A successful cyberattack on infrastructure in Guam or other Indo-Pacific footholds could cripple U.S. military capabilities in the area.

“Volt Typhoon is out there, it’s real,” Scott St. Pierre, who serves as the Navy’s principal cyber adviser, said at West.

“We’re in battle today,” he added. “Information is power.”

Speaking at the West naval conference in San Diego on Feb. 15, Del Toro, a former businessman, said that in a time of war abroad and political uncertainty at home, the U.S. needs companies to deliver weapons, warships, aircraft and more on time, on budget and without excuses.

“You can’t be asking the American taxpayer to make even greater public investments while you continue, in some cases, to goose your stock prices through stock buybacks, deferring promised capital investments, and other accounting maneuvers that, to some, seem to prioritize stock prices that drive executive compensation rather than making the needed, fundamental investments in the industrial base, in your own companies, at a time when our nation needs us to be at all-ahead flank,” he said.

“Through initiatives like the Taxpayer Advocacy Project, I have directed our contract community and the Office of General Counsel to ensure that we will leverage all legal means at our disposal to ensure that the American people are also getting what they paid for,” he added.

The message was delivered to a standing-room-only crowd teeming with some of the world’s largest defense contractors. Del Toro did not single out any one company.

The defense industry in the aggregate is financially healthy, and that status has improved over time, according to a Pentagon contracting study published in April. Traditional defense firms outperform commercial counterparts in many key financial metrics, it found.

Shipbuilder HII this month reported revenue rose 13 percent to $3.2 billon in the fourth quarter of 2023 from the same period a year earlier, as operating income almost tripled to $312 million. General Dynamics said it earned $1 billion, or $3.64 per diluted share, on revenue of $11.7 billion, the highest quarterly EPS and revenue in company history.

Del Toro said the Navy would hold accountable contractors with poor performance, including through a “deep dive” investigation of the most chronic offenders.

“We must endeavor to ensure that contracts with the Navy are delivered on time and on budget,” he said. “The global strategic situation demands it.”

The autonomous MQ-4C Triton intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting drone can fly for more than 24 hours at a time and at altitudes greater than 10 miles, with a range of more than 8,000 nautical miles. Sensors aboard can cue onto electronic signals and adversary communications, and that information can be relayed to warships and other aircraft.

Vice Adm. Craig Clapperton, the Navy’s leader of Fleet Cyber Command, told attendees at the West conference in San Diego the Triton’s signals and geospatial intelligence capabilities are of particular interest to him and his teams. The drone achieved initial operating capability last year, following use in the Indo-Pacific.

Clapperton expects improved information-sharing across the service as Triton usage continues. Northrop has delivered at least five of the uncrewed systems to the service.

“If Triton is on an INDOPACOM orbit, it doesn’t just communicate with Naval Information Operations Command Pacific in Hawaii,” he said. “They’re communicating with Whidbey Island, they’re communicating with Task Force 1060 in NIOC Maryland. They’re communicating with Task Force 1050.”

Northrop last year said it was able to shuttle information between its Triton and simulated battlefield assets, including an F-35, an E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, destroyers and carrier strike groups. The connectivity was made possible via a “gateway” that hooked into the drone’s onboard radar and advanced computing.

To stay ahead of China and Russia, the U.S. military is attempting to dissolve the membranes that have long compartmentalized the services, their databases and their weapons. The multibillion-dollar push, referred to as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, envisions any sensor feeding any shooter the data he or she needs — meaning responses to foreign aggression will likely be quicker, more efficient and less constrained by geography.

“Around the globe, as these Tritons expand their orbit, they will be communicating with all of my NIOCs and bringing, really, a federated approach to that battlespace awareness and how we can help the warfighter have a better understanding of what’s going on in their area of responsibility,” Clapperton said.

While the department investigates what type of drone slipped past air defenses and hit a desert installation known as Tower 22 near Syria, preliminary evidence suggests the attack was the workings of Kataib Hezbollah, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh. The group emerged in the early 2000s and has since been blamed for violence across Iraq.

“In terms of attribution for the attack, we know this is an [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]-backed militia. It has the footprints of Kataib Hezbollah, but not making a final assessment on that,” she said during a Jan. 29 briefing at the Pentagon. “Our teams are continuing to do the analysis, but we know Iran is behind it.”

The Iranian government denied involvement but has long supplied combatants in advancement of its own goals.

Assets from the regime have been used by Houthi rebels in Yemen to harass ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, deployed by Russian forces in their continued invasion of Ukraine and were reportedly exported to Ethiopia and Sudan.

“There are a whole host of airframes and systems that Iran-backed militias in Iraq have been parading for the past few years that show telltale signs of Iranian support,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, told C4ISRNET. “Via these parades, we have seen Iran-backed groups tip their hand as to new capabilities made available by their patron in Tehran.”

Such armaments include reusable Mohajer unmanned aerial vehicles capable of dropping bombs and smaller one-way attack drones such as the Shahed series.

The Defense Intelligence Agency, a principal source of foreign intelligence for U.S. military endeavors, in August showed reporters charred remains of Shahed-101 and Shahed-131 drones and at least one defused warhead with a shaped charge, meant to punch through armor, and fragmenting cubes designed to harm personnel. The pieces were recovered from fighting well beyond Iran’s borders and assembled stateside for accountability.

“As has been the case in other theaters, one-way attack UAVs, popularly known as suicide drones, function as the poor man’s cruise missile. This means a lower and slower threat with a different flight profile compared to rockets and missiles that can take various angles of attack,” Taleblu said. “They are also cheaper to produce and exemplify the phrase ‘quantity has a quality of its own.’”

The attack on Tower 22, close to the al-Tanf garrison, is among the latest in a barrage targeting U.S. forces. The Defense Department has since mid-October logged at least 165 attacks in the region, including 66 in Iraq and 98 in Syria.

What casts the Tower 22 bombardment in such sharp relief is the fact that it “was so tragically successful,” according to Jonathan Lord, a senior fellow and director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security think tank. That difference could be seen as a significant escalation in an area already inflamed.

“I think it also foot-stomps the fact that these militias have been trying to kill Americans for months. These aren’t shots across the bow, these aren’t warnings or demonstrations of might. They’re trying to kill people,” Lord said in an interview. “I think what is under debate right now is who’s going to bear the brunt of that response, and where will that be borne.”

The U.S. military has successfully countered overhead threats like rocket fire and explosive unmanned systems for months, including in the Red Sea. The guided-missile destroyer Carney in December batted down 14 drones that U.S. Central Command described as a wave.

In some cases, exemplified by the DIA display, scraps can be retrieved and studied. Engines, exhaust pipes, wing stabilizers, circuitry, landing gear and more can all aid experts in identifying make, model or origin.

“There may be recoverable parts. There could be radar reflections the military has that might give them a better sense. They might have more signature information,” Lord said. “I’m certain that CENTCOM knows, exactly, where this originated.”

The Wall Street Journal reported the drone that hit Tower 22 may have been mistaken for an American drone that was in the air at the same time. Defense officials said the circumstances are under investigation.

The Pentagon has in the past “wavered in its commitment to fielding” high-energy laser and high-power microwave systems at significant scale, ultimately hurting its suppliers and their logistical choices, the Emerging Technologies Institute and the National Defense Industrial Association said in a study published Jan. 23.

That status quo spells trouble for a type of armament that defense officials have described as a game-changer. Laser and microwave systems, known as HEL and HPM, are thought to have a critical role to play in countering overhead threats such as drones and missiles.

“The U.S. does not have the luxury of time with its DEW development,” they said in the report, which was derived from research and interviews with Lockheed Martin, L3Harris Technologies and Epirus, among other sources. “Adversaries have made progress with their own directed-energy programs, and this progress shows no signs of abating.”

The Defense Department has for decades poured money into directed-energy weapons, an average $1 billion annually in the past three years, according to the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog.

At least 31 directed-energy initiatives are underway across the U.S. military. They include Lockheed’s High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance, or HELIOS, installed aboard the Navy destroyer Preble in 2022, and Epirus’ Leonidas, delivered to the Army in 2023 in furtherance of its Indirect Fire Protection Capability.

Bringing such systems into mass production has proven difficult. Aside from their technological complexity, laser- and microwave-based weapons require specialty materials, such as germanium and gallium, and expensive precision components.

“Current HEL and HPM supply chains face multiple vulnerabilities, including foreign dependency, sole source dependencies, and capacity constraints,” the report says, adding that a lack of clear and consistent demand “negatively impacts the manufacturing base by causing longer lead times, increasing costs, and creating hesitancy by industry to invest in manufacturing capabilities.”

Lasers and microwaves each have their own strengths and weaknesses as weapons. Defense officials and outside analysts insist they will one day play a key role in what’s known as layered defense: having multiple tools or countermeasures ready to thwart different threats in different situations.

Clashes with Yemen-based Houthi rebels in the Red Sea and Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine are examples of potential directed-energy applications in the here and now.

“Today, the U.S. is in an era of great power competition and faces an increasingly contested security environment, with wars in the Middle East and Europe, and confrontations in the South and East China Seas,” the study states. DEW, it adds, “are poised to play an increasingly vital role in countering the threats posed by an increasingly belligerent China, Russia and Iran.”

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.”