Navy brass sees future battleship as catalyst to scale next-gen laser weaponry
The U.S. military’s urgent need to counter cheap adversarial drones in multiple regions has heightened calls for directed energy weapons.
By
Brandi Vincent
February 18, 2026
SAN DIEGO — The Navy must embark on an aggressive push to integrate advanced lasers, high-power microwaves and other directed energy weapons across the fleet as part of its broader plan to counter intensifying and emerging drone and missile threats, according to two of the sea service’s top officials.
Largely due to technical, environmental, industrial and other complexities, Navy insiders have struggled for decades to make DE capabilities a shipboard reality at-scale.
More recently, the U.S. military’s urgent need to counter cheap, swarming adversarial drones in multiple regions has heightened calls for maritime, laser-enabled weaponry.
“The Navy has not, in my opinion, put the demand signal out there to go all-in on solving some of the technological challenges on shipboard laser utilization. You have to target the laser, and that typically takes optics, [which] typically don’t do well in high-mist, high-wave environments. But that’s an engineering problem,” Chief of Naval Operation Adm. Daryl Caudle said. “Lasers come in various form factors that can be chemically based, electrically based; there’s different sources that stimulate the coherent light. And that’s an engineering problem — that’s not a Navy problem.”
https://defensescoop.com/2026/02/18/navy-lasers-admiral-caudle-golden-fleet-battleship/
