counter-directed energy – A 2023 study from researchers at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School lays out what it would take for U.S. forces to defend naval drones against high-energy laser attacks, arguing that the first and hardest problem is detection—then pushing a layered mix of weat
For years, the U.S. military has poured billions of dollars into high-energy laser weapons designed to burn drones out of the sky. But the uncomfortable gap has always been what happens when an adversary brings the same kind of weapon to the fight—and does it fast.
China has fielded a growing laser arsenal capable of killing drones at ranges up to 25 kilometers. Russia’s Peresvet has reportedly been in active service. And laser systems have been spreading worldwide through indigenous development, proliferation, and a burgeoning export market. That combination is now forcing a hard question: if lasers are becoming a routine threat, how will U.S. platforms survive them—especially drones?.
The U.S. military’s answer is being worked under a name: counter-directed energy weapons, or CDEW. It’s a still-nascent field. No dedicated CDEW system is publicly known to have been fielded. and most of the related research and development remains conceptual. Yet a 2023 study published in the Journal of Directed Energy by researchers at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School offers the clearest public window so far into what defending against a laser weapon could look like.
The study zeroes in on naval unmanned aerial vehicles, and it is easy to see why. Drones are among the most exposed military assets in the world. They’re increasingly designed for expendability. they can operate close to adversaries. and they carry no meaningful armor—unlike a destroyer. a tank. or other heavily protected platforms. The same logic that makes drones attractive as delivery mechanisms for attritable mass also makes them especially vulnerable to a weapon optimized for persistent energy delivery.
Within that vulnerability, naval drones sit at the sharpest end. The researchers evaluated four representative drones of various sizes: a large Group 5 broad-area maritime surveillance (BAMS) drone. the MQ-4C Triton; a large Group 5 combat drone. Northrop Grumman’s X-47B demonstrator; a rotary-wing Group 4 ISR and fire support drone. the MQ-8C Fire Scout; and a small Group 2 ISR drone. a Small Tactical Unmanned Aerial System from ScanEagle.
When faced with a 100 kilowatt laser with no countermeasures in place. three of the four drones were assessed as destroyed after just a few seconds of irradiation. Only the large BAMS drone survived. and only because of distance alone: it was operating at extreme altitude and at ranges exceeding 8. 000 nautical miles from a potential threat.
The researchers also stressed that laser threats aren’t just about the drone’s size. Lasers bleed energy over distance and can be disrupted by atmospheric interference. Altitude and range matter. So does whether the drone is fast-moving, because tracking and maintaining a sustained beam against a moving target is harder. Material composition also matters: a thin composite airframe melts far faster than a thick aluminum one.
Mission profile changes the stakes again. A drone loitering at low altitude in a contested littoral is more exposed than one cruising at 60. 000 feet over open ocean. In the NPS research. the small Group 2 ISR drone ranked as the most vulnerable of the four drones. while the BAMS was the safest—until it came down to land.
Even before defense can begin, the study lands on a brutal reality: no naval drone—or any U.S. military platform—is currently known to be equipped with systems to detect a high-energy laser attack as it occurs. In many cases. the first sign that a laser is being used against a platform may arrive only during battle damage assessment. The detection gap is the foundational problem for CDEW, and everything else depends on closing it.
From there, the researchers identified five broad categories of CDEW solutions.
First is using the weather. Fog, rain, haze, dust, and smoke can absorb and scatter laser beam photons, reducing the energy that reaches the target. At higher power levels above 100 kw. even clear air can work against a laser through thermal blooming. where the laser heats the air it passes through and defocuses the beam. The takeaway is operational: plan missions to exploit bad weather and adverse atmospheric conditions wherever possible. The catch is that doing that accurately requires intelligence on where a laser threat is located and what its capabilities are—so the mission can calculate how much protection the atmosphere will actually buy.
Second are warning systems. Sensors like the AN/AVR-2B Laser Detection System (LDS) are already used on some military aircraft to detect laser rangefinders. target designators. and beam-riding missiles. The study argues that integrating similar systems into drone payloads could form an early warning capability: a drone detects it is being irradiated. alerts operators and nearby platforms. and triggers active countermeasures or evasive maneuvers. The challenge is that warning systems have to match the laser’s wavelength to work reliably. and they need to be designed into the platform from the start rather than bolted on later.
Third are active countermeasures. which the researchers divide into four approaches: smoke and aerosol screens to absorb and scatter the beam; laser jammers that analyze the incoming beam. identify the source location and intensity. and fire back a disrupting signal to break the adversary’s targeting lock; basic counterfire that deploys weapons against the laser system itself if its position is confirmed; and decoy drones that act as false targets. drawing the beam away from mission-critical assets. The core shared requirement is time: you have to know you’re being lased before you can respond.
Fourth is armor up—passive shielding, the most engineering-intensive solution. In the NPS simulation, three materials delivered the biggest gains. Bragg mirrors—dielectric mirrors built from alternating layers of two optical materials—can reflect up to 99.99% of laser energy for a specific wavelength. essentially making the beam bounce off. Reflective coatings work on a similar principle and can be applied directly to an airframe. even as a temporary pre-mission treatment matched to a known threat wavelength. Ablative coatings absorb energy and burn away in a controlled fashion to buy the drone time to escape.
In the NPS analysis. Bragg mirror coatings were the single most effective method tested. protecting all four drone types under the simulated 100 kw threat. But the caveat is sharp: the mirrors only work at the specific wavelength they’re built for. Use the wrong coating against the wrong laser and the weight is wasted.
Fifth are evasive maneuvers and swarm tactics. Continuous wave laser weapons require sustained contact to inflict damage. Break contact by banking hard, diving, or flying erratically and the required dwell time resets. Swarm tactics push the problem back onto the defender’s adversary: a single laser system can only engage one target at a time. so a swarm forces the system to choose and re-engage sequentially. In the NPS simulations. swarm tactics proved the second most reliable CDEW method. protecting drones in roughly three to four out of every five simulated engagements. Evasive maneuvering alone was less reliable, limited in part by latency inherent in remote control. The study also points to onboard autonomous maneuvering—where a drone detects irradiation and evades without waiting for human command—as a promising direction applicable to any remotely operated platform facing a laser threat.
When the CDEW analysis was run against the four drone archetypes. the results mapped neatly onto the limits of each approach. Under cloudy atmospheric conditions. only the BAMS drone—already safe without countermeasures—gained enough protection from the weather alone to be considered survivable. Bragg mirrors theoretically protected everything, but only with the assumption that the laser’s wavelength was known. Swarms worked most of the time. but evasive maneuvers alone failed more often than they succeeded for three of the four drone types.
The overall lesson is familiar to anyone tracking directed energy weapons on the offensive side: there is no silver bullet. The most reliable CDEW strategy, according to the study, is layered defense combining atmospheric awareness, passive shielding, warning systems, and active countermeasures.
That layered promise still meets major reality checks. The NPS research itself is not a solution. No CDEW payload has been fielded on a U.S. military drone. The detection gap remains unsolved. And the shielding solutions that perform best in simulation are the ones most dependent on intelligence the U.S. military may not always have.
There’s also an architectural challenge that mirrors offensive laser weapons: CDEW solutions can’t simply be bolted onto existing platforms. Laser warning receivers, countermeasure dispensers, and specialized shielding materials need to be integrated at the design stage as platform requirements.
On the ground, the threat is moving in the opposite direction—toward normalization. Laser weapons are spreading around the world, and the adversarial laser weapon threat grows more urgent with each passing day. The question now isn’t whether CDEW can be imagined. It’s whether the U.S. military begins building the playbook before it needs it.
This article is republished with permission from Laser Wars, a newsletter about military laser weapons and other futuristic defense technology.
counter-directed energy weapons CDEW high-energy lasers drone defense U.S. Naval Postgraduate School Journal of Directed Energy MQ-4C Triton X-47B MQ-8C Fire Scout ScanEagle AN/AVR-2B Laser Detection System Bragg mirrors thermal blooming swarm tactics evasive maneuvers