Trials of the Dragon’s Inferno Begin!

Dragonfire, the UK’s Laser Directed Energy Weapon Program (LDEW) spearheaded by MBDA, has effectively initiated a series of evaluations to validate the precision and strength of the innovative laser armament.

The inaugural round of these assessments, recently carried out by the Dragonfire consortium—an industry and UK MOD partnership involving MBDA, Leonardo, QinetiQ, and Dstl—at low energy successfully demonstrated the framework’s capability to track aerial and maritime targets with astonishing precision.

This achievement has set the stage for the subsequent phase of evaluations that will mark a significant milestone for UK industry, involved in executing a stationary high-power laser test while ensuring aimpoint accuracy. The following phase aims to merge the results of these two evaluations, integrating the newly validated tracking precision with the high-powered laser by engaging targets in operationally relevant scenarios.

Chris Allam, Managing Director of MBDA UK, stated, “The success of these evaluations is a pivotal milestone in the advancement of sovereign laser directed energy armaments. It represents the result of considerable efforts from both industry and Dstl teams, surmounting disruptions caused by COVID and addressing technical hurdles associated with the innovative features of Dragonfire that are pushing the boundaries of what is achievable in the realm of laser weaponry.”

The critical challenge of an LDEW framework is to safely regulate and concentrate high laser power on an incredibly precise point over considerable distances. The tracking evaluation served as an exceptional assessment of the component parts of the Dragonfire tracking system collaborating to accomplish this.

This evaluation employed a low-power QinetiQ laser, Leonardo’s beam directing technology, and MBDA’s Image Processing and Control systems to enable the ultra-precise “fine” pointing and tracking accuracy required to create the destructive effect when a high-powered laser is utilized.

Additional subsystems including the Command and Control (C2), Effector Management System (EMS), and “coarse” tracking—redirecting the laser toward the target—were also validated during the evaluation.