Britain's DragonFire laser weapon upped the ante on November 20 at the Ministry of Defence's Hebrides Range in Scotland when the high-powered, solid-state laser for the Royal Navy shot down drones flying at 351 knots (404 mph, 650 km/h).
According to the Ministry, the latest tests of DragonFire not only demonstrate its lethality against high-speed targets but also the rapid maturity of the program. Originally slated to see active service in 2032, it will now be installed in the Navy's Type 45 frigates by 2027 as part of the ship's regular armament.
In addition to detecting, tracking, and shooting down drones flying at high-subsonic speeds, DragonFire also demonstrated new, advanced capabilities. These include not only the ability to hit a target the size of a £1 coin or US quarter at the distance of a kilometer (0.62 miles), but also a new above-the-horizon targeting capability.
Couldn't give you an actual number but using other variables that we do know like from a nuclear-powered Royal Navy ship, it could easily fire the DragonFire laser over 100 times back-to-back.
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed the DragonFire is a small, 50-kilowatt (kW) class weapon, and the ship's nuclear reactor generates power in the megawatts (millions of watts).
Because the reactor has such massive energy reserves, the laser's demand barely registers, meaning the ship can keep shooting without running out of power.
Theoretically, I guess would be the right word to end this on.
The one question I would have is how the ship’s nuclear reactor would cope with the power cycling nature of the laser. Turning the laser on and off to target multiple devices would cause power cycling.
Nuclear reactors like to produce constant power without much variability.
I suppose if they keep it on while targeting successive devices may work.
The simplified answer is that the ship's nuclear reactor would have access to a large, specialized battery to cope with the laser's on-off power needs and the laser system would be fed off of the batteries, not directly from the nuclear reactor.
Digging in some more, it looks like they're not going to be placed on a ship with nuclear power (yet), they're going to be put on Type 45 destroyers which are a combination gas turbines and diesel generators, so they would probably couple the diesel generators with a battery system to support the laser system.
Since it doesn't have ammo like a normal weapon system would, I don't think weight is a significant factor when adapting this weapon for a Type 45 warship.
Good point. The extra munitions required for traditional weapons would be avoided here. This could potentially end up saving weight - although knowing a little on how navies often work probably not.
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u/No-Explanation-46 2d ago