DragonFire laser shoots down high‑speed drones traveling at 400mph, costs $13 per shot — UK Navy to begin deploying system on destroyers

The DragonFire system firing a bright red laser, engaging a drone mid-air.

(Image credit: UK Ministry of Defence)

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has announced that the high‑power laser system DragonFire successfully shot down drones travelling at speeds up to 403 miles per hour (650 km/h) during recent trials at the Hebrides range in Scotland and has signed a $413 million (£316 million) contract with MBDA UK to begin deploying the system on the Royal Navy’s Type 45 destroyers from 2027, five years earlier than originally planned.

In the trials, the MoD reports that DragonFire achieved a UK first for the above-the-horizon tracking and interception of high-speed drones. The system is claimed to cost about £10 (~$13) per shot and can reportedly hit a £1 coin (slightly smaller than a US Quarter) from a kilometer (0.621 miles or ~1,093 yards) away. The contract links the program to the Strategic Defence Review and includes job creation across the country, with nearly 600 skilled roles supported in England and Scotland.

DragonFire is being developed by MBDA in partnership with QinetiQ and Leonardo. The MoD says the system will be installed on a Type 45 destroyer as part of an accelerated procurement cycle, five years ahead of its original schedule. While it’s thought that the deal covers multiple ship fits, only the initial one is confirmed for 2027.

“This high-power laser will see our Royal Navy at the leading edge of innovation in NATO, delivering a cutting-edge capability to help defend the UK and our allies in this new era of threat,” said Luke Pollard MP, the Minister of Defence Readiness and Industry.

Hard-kill solution to major new threat

The system is described as a hard‑kill solution intended to provide a cost-effective alternative to conventional anti‑air missiles, which typically cost hundreds of thousands of pounds per engagement. DragonFire’s value depends on sustained power generation and accurate tracking, as the weapon requires line‑of‑sight and is subject to atmospheric interference. The MoD has not disclosed the maximum engagement range or the laser’s output power during the test phase.

The UK previously tested a vehicle‑mounted radio-frequency directed energy weapon for swarm disruption and a ground-based high-energy laser demonstrator called Wolfhound, which exhibited 100% success in field trials last year. DragonFire’s shipboard role targets higher-speed aerial threats with precision, where the mobility and wide‑field effects of those systems are less applicable.

The first ship integration in 2027 will test the system’s viability under real maritime conditions, including motion, power draw, and weather effects. If those trials prove successful, additional Royal Navy fits could follow.

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Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist. Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.

19 Comments Comment from the forums

Unolocogringo

Woooohooo lasers!
Hold my beer for me!
Reply
John_Turner

This is about a hundred 500-watts-at-aperture fiber lasers harnessed to a proprietary beam combiner for 50,000-watts-at-aperture power, feeding into a really speedy gimbaled mirror.

It confirms a target by shining a continuous-wave guide beam on it, then burns it at full power in a series of pulses.
It takes advantage of the target's own airspeed to clear fumes between pulses, hammering its way into the target one pulse at a time.
Anything that can't stand having a single one-inch hole hammered into it is no longer safe.
That includes not just drones but artillery shells too. This thing can fend off an entire artillery regiment by prematurely detonating the shells in flight. No known countermeasures, chroming the shells doesn't help.
It's the future, folks. Next stop: Future Future!
Reply
twin_savage

John_Turner said:
That includes not just drones but artillery shells too. This thing can fend off an entire artillery regiment by prematurely detonating the shells in flight. No known countermeasures, chroming the shells doesn't help.

This is highly misleading; the UK's DragonFire has no hope of defending against what normal people would call artillery.
It might be able to defend against very very fragile and slow rockets and specific types of mortars assuming it can even track them, but it'd need more than an order of magnitude more power and be able to track an object at mach 3+ to defend against what normal people call artillery which this system cannot do.

Against plastic quadcopters and chintzy composite flying lawn mowers it will do very well though.
Reply
USAFRet

twin_savage said:
Against plastic quadcopters and chintzy composite flying lawn mowers it will do very well though.
Maybe not arty shells, but regular aircraft might be vulnerable.
Reply
twin_savage

USAFRet said:
Maybe not arty shells, but regular aircraft might be vulnerable.
You're probably right, but I'm thinking doctrine would say to use a missile to ensure the job is done quickly and with a higher success rate for targets that had a more beneficial kill exchange ratio... that being said there are probably alot of AC that aren't particularly valuable lasers would be good for like the new emerging category of "drone fighters" like some of the GA converts Ukraine uses to down Shaheds a la Yak-52
Reply
USAFRet

twin_savage said:
You're probably right, but I'm thinking doctrine would say to use a missile to ensure the job is done quickly and with a higher success rate for targets that had a more beneficial kill exchange ratio... that being said there are probably alot of AC that aren't particularly valuable lasers would be good for like the new emerging category of "drone fighters" like some of the GA converts Ukraine uses to down Shaheds a la Yak-52
1. This is new technology. It will evolve.

2. Just about every small aircraft is vulnerable to a couple of 1" holes in it. F-16/15/18, Typhoon, Rafale, MiG, Su...etc, etc.
Reply
twin_savage

USAFRet said:
2. Just about every small aircraft is vulnerable to a couple of 1" holes in it. F-16/15/18, Typhoon, Rafale, MiG, Su...etc, etc.
The problem with this is that most of the structures on the the US and Russian craft are aluminum and will wick the heat away from where the laser is trying to cut. The European craft might not fair as well with their composite skins.

This is super back-of-the-napkin math but when sheet aluminum of thickness very roughly comparable to a wing skin is cut we'd use 3kW focused into a 20 thou spot size; 3kW focused into a 20 thou spot is 150 times more flux than what the DragonFire is producing at a 1" spot size even before accounting for all the atmospheric attenuation that would affect the DragonFire.
Laser travel speed is also a factor in this analogy, but DragonFire's weak output would put it far below the minimum travel speed needed to produce a cut.

EDIT:
I'm also assuming the DragonFire's beam diverges to a 1" spot size at whatever engagement range we're talking about which I don't think is unreasonable; even if it only diverged into a quarter inch spot size it'd still be below the threshold for cutting aluminum of the ⅛-¼ range.
Reply
bernard2025

You don't stop lasers with chrome or mirrors. You stop lasers with intumescent paint. The paint absorbs the heat and flakes off. Lasers are useless.
Reply
Co BIY

The power supply on these has to be pretty substantial.
Reply
sukebe

John_Turner said:
This is about a hundred 500-watts-at-aperture fiber lasers harnessed to a proprietary beam combiner for 50,000-watts-at-aperture power, feeding into a really speedy gimbaled mirror.

It confirms a target by shining a continuous-wave guide beam on it, then burns it at full power in a series of pulses.
It takes advantage of the target's own airspeed to clear fumes between pulses, hammering its way into the target one pulse at a time.
Anything that can't stand having a single one-inch hole hammered into it is no longer safe.
That includes not just drones but artillery shells too. This thing can fend off an entire artillery regiment by prematurely detonating the shells in flight. No known countermeasures, chroming the shells doesn't help.
It's the future, folks. Next stop: Future Future!
So...death star?
Reply

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