The Sentinel Weekly: Europe enters the laser race
Plus the EU’s 2030 roadmap, German kamikaze drones, Turkish Typhoons and more
In a long war, it’s not enough to be able to shoot down drones. You need to shoot them down more cheaply than your opponent can field them. One possible solution comes straight from the pages of science fiction: lasers.
The US Army revealed last year that it had deployed laser point defence systems overseas, though it’s not clear whether they have been fired in anger. The US has also successfully tested a shipborne laser system called Helios. And China, at its military parade last month, unveiled the modular LY-1 system that can be deployed on land or sea, and which is designed to counter drones, missiles, and possibly even satellites.
European companies are rushing to catch up. This week Rheinmetall and MBDA said they had completed preliminary testing on a naval laser system that they described as a “powerful and cost-effective addition to conventional guided missiles” in countering drones. The prototype has been transferred to the German Navy for further testing, and is due to enter service in 2029.
New threat
Several recent drone incursions into Europe, as well as their extensive use in the Ukraine war, have demonstrated the need for a new type of countermeasure. Just this week, Belgium’s defence minister said several unidentified drones were able to fly over a military base for “an extended period of time”.
In late September, Copenhagen airport was forced to close for four hours due to the incursion of several drones. Coming just days before an EU summit in the city, the incident drew immediate suspicions of Russian activity. The authorities did not shoot down the drones, citing a risk to nearby civilian areas.
Earlier last month, at least 19 Russian drones entered Polish airspace. Polish and Dutch fighter jets scrambled and shot down “the drones that posed a direct threat”, according to Prime Minister Donald Tusk. At least one of the drones shot down was of the Shahed type, a large Iranian design comparable to a cruise missile, used by Russia to attack civilian targets in Ukraine. A Russian Shahed also entered Romanian airspace last month, and was tracked by a pair of F-16s.
Scrambling jets is not a scalable countermeasure to drone incursions. Aside from the limited number of planes and pilots, the latest Sidewinder missiles carried by Dutch F-35s cost hundreds of thousands of euros each – significantly more than a Shahed. Surface-to-air missiles also cost multiples more than the smaller drones based on civilian designs that they might be expected to counter.
Lowering the unit cost
Defence industries have been working on ways to reliably take down drones without resorting to guided missiles, which incur a huge cost every time they are fired. Even a weapon system that is expensive to build, like a laser, will be much cheaper than missiles if fired many times over the course of a long conflict – and is therefore a more effective deterrent.
Still, lasers have several shortcomings beyond their high deployment cost. They consume a lot of power and must sink a lot of heat, making them difficult to deploy on mobile platforms. Large lasers able to engage cruise missiles may be limited to static ground installations and ships for some time.
But this limitation may also be a business opportunity. If laser technology proves effective, there could soon be demand for a huge range of systems tailored to different roles, from heavy ship-mounted lasers effective against large targets to lighter, more mobile variants designed to support battlefield formations on the move.
Point of view: Clearing a path to 2030
The EU’s 2030 defence plan has the right objectives but will need to clear several political hurdles to succeed, Luigi Scazzieri at the Centre for European Reform wrote this week.
The Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030, published earlier this month, aims to bring greater coherence to the various EU, national and multilateral funding commitments. Four ‘flagship’ priorities – drones, land, air and space – will set the strategic direction, while small ‘capability coalitions’ will tackle individual requirements more efficiently than larger formats. This “should allow for more joint procurement and therefore enable greater interoperability and economies of scale,” Scazzieri writes.
He nevertheless identifies several structural challenges. A greater role for the EU in defence planning could be seen as a threat to NATO, and by extension US, prerogatives; it also raises questions of how to integrate important non-EU allies like the UK and Norway.
In the other direction, EU engagement will require member states to commit resources and submit sensitive data to joint planning efforts. There is also a question of whether the EU can keep coming up with the necessary instruments to fund its ambitions.
Finally, governments will need to bring down barriers to cross-border procurement to allow a single market for the defence industry to emerge.
“The effort to strengthen Europe’s defences also hinges on whether Europeans can avoid duplication and weave their efforts into a more coherent whole,” Scazzieri writes. “Ultimately only European governments can deliver the capabilities that underpin credible deterrence.”
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We at The Sentinel also believe in the need for a cohesive approach, one that will require access to information across borders. Our mission is to facilitate a coordinated European rearmament effort by serving policy, industrial and military professionals with actionable news and insights.
In the news
Start-ups Helsing and Stark, and defence giant Rheinmetall are set to share a German public contract for kamikaze drones, the FT reported. The three companies would make nearly €300 million each – the biggest contracts yet for Helsing and Stark. The contracts must still be approved by the Bundestag’s budget committee.
Turkey agreed to buy 20 Typhoon jets during a visit by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The deal is worth £8 billion (€9.1 billion) to the cross-border Eurofighter consortium led by Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo. Turkey will become the tenth country to operate the multirole fighter jet.
Thales has been awarded a French public contract for a ground-based space radar. The system, dubbed Aurore, will be able to detect and track objects in low Earth orbit at altitudes of up to 2,000km. Set to be deployed in 2030, the data it gathers will contribute to the EU Space Surveillance and Tracking (EUSST) initiative.
The UK will shortly begin mass-producing Octopus interceptor drones for Ukraine. British companies will refine the Ukrainian design and supply thousands of units a month as a relatively cheap counter to Russian drone and missile attacks, UK Defence Journal reported. The tech-sharing agreement was announced last month.
The European Space Agency wants a €1 billion budget line to acquire military-grade reconnaissance satellites, Euractiv reported. The provision will be part of a 3-year budget of €22 billion, to be agreed at a summit next month, and will be the first time the ESA has raised money for defence-related procurement.
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