Drones

The U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Preble used its High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system to down four drones in a demonstration last year, Lockheed Martin has shared. Earlier this month, the Navy’s top officer said his goal is for directed energy weapons to become the go-to choice for warship crews when it comes to defending against close-in threats. However, the service has continued to face significant hurdles in fielding operational laser weapon systems.

“Speaking of amazing technology, we successfully used a shipboard laser system, Lockheed Martin’s HELIOS, to knock an incoming UAV [uncrewed aerial vehicle] right out of the sky,” the company’s CEO Jim Taiclet said during a quarterly earnings call last week. “The HELIOS weapon system successfully neutralized four drone threats in a U.S. Navy-operated counter-UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] demonstration at sea, showcasing an opportunity to eliminate drone attacks using lasers, and saving U.S. and allied air defense missiles for more advanced threats.”

TWZ reached out to Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for HELIOS, for more information and was directed to comments from Navy Vice Adm. Brendan McLane at the Surface Navy Association’s (SNA) annual symposium in January. McLane is the commander of Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet. As the Navy’s top surface warfare officer, he is also often referred to by the title SWOBOSS.

“The Surface Navy has a rare opportunity with leadership aligned on delivering lethality, capability, and capacity at speed. As an enterprise, we must continue to think big as we develop the future platforms within the world. We must lay the foundations for the systems on those ships now so that they deliver on their promise to the American people,” McLane had said at the SNA conference. “Continued iteration with USS Preble’s HELIOS laser weapons system is another example of this. Last fall, successful at-sea testing paved the way for future laser weapons systems. We need to continue on this path. I am committed to advancing laser technology to the fleet. The dream of a laser on every ship can become a real one.”

TWZ has also reached out to the Navy for more information.

HELIOS, which also carries the designation Mk 5 Mod 0, is a 60-kilowatt-class laser directed energy weapon designed to be powerful enough to destroy or at least damage certain targets, such as drones or small boats. As its name indicates, it has a secondary function as a ‘dazzler’ to blind optical sensors and seekers, which could also be damaged or destroyed in the process. In the past, Lockheed Martin has talked about potentially scaling HELIOS’ power rating up to 150 kilowatts.

HELIOS has been integrated on Preble since 2022, and is currently the only Navy ship equipped with the system. Several other Arleigh Burke class destroyers have received lower-powered Optical Dazzling Interdictor (ODIN) laser systems. The Navy has installed more experimental high-energy laser directed energy weapons on other ships in the past.

Preble successfully downed at least one drone using HELIOS in a previous test in 2024. That milestone was disclosed in an annual report from the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) released in January 2025.

A multi-target scenario is a logical evolution in the demonstration of HELIOS’ capabilities. The Navy’s experiences during operations in and around the Red Sea in the past few years have underscored the challenges defenders face at sea and on land when responding to large volume drone attacks. Uncrewed aerial systems layered in with other threats like anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles present even more complexities. The potential for traditional air defense capabilities to be overwhelmed is real. The level of complexity will only increase as artificial intelligence and machine learning-driven capabilities, including automated targeting and fully networked swarming, keep proliferating globally.

Laser directed energy weapons like HELIOS offer functionally unlimited magazine depth, as long as there is sufficient power and cooling capacity. As Lockheed Martin’s Taiclet noted last week, lasers also offer a way to conserve traditional surface-to-air missiles for use against targets that they might be better optimized against. That is particularly valuable for ships operating in areas where opportunities for rearming may be extremely limited and/or force them to leave their assigned station for an extended period of time.

This all presents cost benefits, too. As an example, the latest versions of the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM), used for point defense on many Navy ships, each cost around $1 million.

USS Porter Conducts SeaRAM Test Fire

Many warships across the Navy are also equipped with Mk 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon Systems armed with six-barreled 20mm M61 Vulcan rotary cannons, but the ammunition for those weapons is not unlimited, either. Each Phalanx has enough ammunition to fire for a total of around 30 seconds, at most, at the lower of two rate-of-fire settings, before needing to be reloaded. Many ships across the Navy also have a mixture of other guns, including 5-inch or 57mm main guns, as well as 25mm or 30mm automatic cannons, all of which can also be used against close-in threats.

Phalanx CIWS Close-in Weapon System In Action – US Navy’s Deadly Autocannon

There are still significant questions about the demonstration last fall, including how rapidly the USS Preble was able to shift HELIOS from one target to another and how long it took each one to be effectively neutralized. The proximity of the drones to the ship and what kinds of profiles they were flying are also unknown.

A single laser can only engage one target at once. As the beam gets further away from the source, its power also drops, just as a result of it having to propagate through the atmosphere. This can be further compounded by the weather and other environmental factors like smoke and dust. More power is then needed to produce suitable effects at appreciable distances. Adaptive optics are used to help overcome atmospheric distortion to a degree. Altogether, laser directed energy weapons generally remain relatively short-range systems.

In addition, laser directed energy weapons, especially sensitive optics, present inherent reliability challenges for use in real-world military operations. Shipboard use adds rough sea states and saltwater exposure to the equation. There is also the matter of needing to keep everything properly cooled, which creates additional power generation and other demands.

Despite the hurdles, the U.S. Navy, as well as other navies globally, have continued to pursue laser directed energy weapons, as well as high-power microwaves, because of the capabilities they promise to offer in the face of an ever-expanding drone and missile threat ecosystem. HELIOS and ODIN both feature prominently in the design of the Navy’s future Trump class “battleships.” There has been talk already about the potential for expanding that directed energy arsenal to include lasers with megawatt-class power ratings.

“You know, we have continuous electron beam, free electron lasers today that can scale to megawatt-plus, gigawatt-plus [power ratings],” Navy Adm. Daryl Caudle, Chief of Naval Operations, told TWZ and other outlets at the Surface Navy Association’s (SNA) annual symposium last month. “I’m telling you that I don’t think a one-megawatt laser is beyond what should be on that battery [on the Trump class].”

Beyond the Trump class, “this is my goal, if it’s in line of sight of a ship, that the first solution that we’re using is directed energy,” Caudle also said. “Point defense needs to shift to directed energy. It has an infinite magazine.”

“What that does for me is it improves my loadout optimization, so that my loadout, my payload volume is optimized for offensive weapons,” the Navy’s top officer added. Furthermore, “as you increase power, the actual ability to actually engage and keep power on target, and the effectiveness of a laser just goes up.”

Challenges to the Navy’s directed energy future clearly still remain. In speaking last month, Caudle was optimistic for the future, but he has been open about difficulties in the past. At the SNA symposium in 2025, the admiral, then head of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, said he was “embarrassed” at the state of his service’s directed energy weapon developments.

“I am not content with the pace of directed energy weapons,” Vice Adm. McLane had also said back in 2024. “We must deliver on this promise that this technology gives us.”

This is reflective of broader difficulties that all branches have faced in the development and fielding of laser directed energy weapons, in particular, for use in the air and on the ground, as well as at sea, as you can read more about here.

What we do know is that the Navy continues to use the USS Preble to prove out the HELIOS system, including with the recently disclosed demonstration of its drone-zapping capabilities last fall.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Feb. 2 (UPI) — A Russian drone strike in Ukraine’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region has killed at least 12 miners and injured eight more, according to officials who are accusing the Kremlin of attacking unarmed civilians.

DTEK Group, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said a Russian drone struck a bus transporting staff from its Dnipropetrovsk mine, resulting in at least 20 casualties.

“The bus was hit as it was taking miners home after their shift,” the company said in a statement.

The strike was part of a large-scale Russian assault on DTEK’s mining facilities in the region, the company said as it extended its condolences to the families and loved ones of those killed.

Maxim Teimchenko, CEO of DTEK, accused Russia of conducting “an unprovoked terrorist attack on a purely civilian target.”

“This attack marks the single largest loss of life of DTEK employees since russia’s full-scale invasion and is one of the darkest days in our history,” he said.

“Their sacrifice will never be forgotten.”

Serhii Berskresnov, a Ukraine Defense Ministry adviser, identified the weapon used in the attack on Telegram as an Iran-made Shahed drone.

Using a MESH radio modem, the drone pilot deliberately attacked the bus after spotting it on the road, he said.

The drone struck near the bus, with its blast wave forcing the driver to lose control and crash into a fence, he said, adding that as the injured were exiting the vehicle, a second Shahed drone struck.

“The operators operating from the territory of Russia 100% saw and identified the target as civilian, saw they were not military and made a conscious decision to attack,” he said.

“This is yet another act of terrorism. I have no words.”

Russia has been widely accused of committing war crimes in its nearly 3-year-old war in Ukraine. From indiscriminate attacks on civilians to executions, torture and forced deportations, Russia has been repeatedly denounced for alleged war crimes that it denies.

The International Criminal Court has formally opened a war crimes and crimes against humanity investigation into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has issued arrest warrants for Russian officials, including its authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin.

The strike was one of numerous Russian attacks across Ukraine on Sunday, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stating on X that people throughout the country were without heat and electricity. Railway infrastructure was hit in the Sumy region, he said.

During the month of January, Russia launched more than 6,000 attack drones, 5,550 guided aerial bombs and 158 missiles at Ukraine, Zelensky said.

“Virtually all of it targeted the energy sector, the railways and our infrastructure — everything that sustains normal life.”

On Saturday, Russia bombed a maternity hospital in Ukraine’s southern city of Zaporizhzhia, injuring six people, according to Prime Minister Yulia Svydenko.

“This is the nature of Russia’s war,” she said.

The attacks occurred during a cold February that has seen the temperatures drop well below freezing, according to the country’s hydrometeorological center.

The strikes come despite U.S. President Donald Trump stating last week that Putin promised him that Russia would refrain from hitting Ukraine for a week.

“I personally asked President Putin not to fire into Kyiv and the various towns for a week, and he agreed to that,” he said during a cabinet meeting without making clear which towns, cities and regions that the Russian leader had agreed not to attack.

“We’re very happy that they did it.”

Trump has been pushing since before he returned to office to end the war, which he vowed to do during his first 24 hours back in the White House.

Zelensky confirmed Sunday that dates for the next trilateral meetings for a cease-fire between the United States and Russia have been set for Wednesday and Thursday in Abu Dhabi.

“Ukraine is ready for a substantive discussion, and we are interested in ensuring that the outcome brings us closer to a real and dignified end to the war,” he said.

Lockheed Martin has offered a very rare confirmation of the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone‘s operational exploits, in this case, in support of the recent mission to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.

“This is what you can expect from Lockheed Martin: continued significant investment to advance technology development and produce proven major weapon systems at ever greater scale. We build on this momentum with a powerful start to 2026,” CEO Jim Taiclet said during a quarterly earnings call this morning. “Lockheed Martin products, once again, proved critical to the U.S. military’s most demanding missions. The recent Operation Absolute Resolve [in Venezuela] included F-35 and F-22 fighter jets, RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drones, and Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters, which helped ensure mission success while bringing the men and women of our armed forces home safely.”

After the conclusion of Operation Absolute Resolve on January 3, video footage had emerged showing at least one, and possibly two, RQ-170s arriving at the former Naval Station Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico. This was a major hub for aircraft employed in the operation and had already offered very strong evidence of the Sentinel’s involvement.

The U.S. military subsequently confirmed that F-35s, F-22s, and Black Hawks – the latter belonging to the U.S. Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Night Stalkers – among many other types of aircraft had taken part in the operation. While mention was also made of the use of drones, the RQ-170 was not explicitly named.

A now-deleted post in December 2025 from Air Forces Southern (AFSOUTH) on X, which included a picture of an individual wearing a name patch with an RQ-170 silhouette and the sleeve insignia of the 432nd Wing, had prompted earlier questions about whether the drones were operating in the region. The only units known to fly Sentinel are the 30th and 44th Reconnaissance Squadrons, both of which are assigned to the 432nd Wing at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. A total of between 20 and 30 RQ-170s are said to be in the Air Force’s inventory.

The exact role the RQ-170 played in Operation Absolute Resolve remains unclear, and Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet offered no further details. TWZ has previously detailed how the mission and the lead-up to it are exactly what the Sentinel was designed for. As we wrote:

“RQ-170s would have provided a valuable way to discreetly track Maduro’s movements and otherwise establish his ‘patterns of life,’ as well as those of the forces guarding him, for an extended period of time in the lead-up to the actual launch of the operation to capture him. During the mission itself, having one of the drones orbiting overhead would have provided an indispensable source of real-time information, including to help spot threats that might unexpectedly appear. Those same feeds would also have given senior leaders, including President Donald Trump, a way to watch the operation as it happened.”

…

“With all this in mind, RQ-170s could also have surveilled Venezuelan military bases and other sites that U.S. forces struck as part of the operation overnight, and helped with post-strike assessments. The Air Force has disclosed having at least conducted tests in the past of the Sentinel in the bomb damage assessment role in combination with B-2 bombers.”

Since then, it has also emerged that the U.S. military planning for the mission included preparations to destroy three airfields in the country if it appeared that fighters belonging to the Venezuelan Air Force were attempting to scramble and intercept the raiding force. That threat did not materialize, and none of those facilities were ultimately struck, but it would have been necessary to closely monitor them to be sure.

Substations were also targeted to cut power to the Fuerte Tiuna (Fort Tiuna), a sprawling military base in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, housing Maduro’s fortress-like compound.

Multiple Venezuelan air defense assets were also struck at various locations in the country during the operation. TWZ has also highlighted previously how suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses (SEAD/DEAD) would have been a key mission for the F-22s and F-35s in the force package. U.S. Navy EA-18G Growlers, and likely at least one U.S. Air Force EC-130H Compass Call aircraft, also contributed electronic warfare support to this mission and other aspects of the operation.

The RQ-170’s participation in Operation Absolute Resolve adds to the still relatively limited publicly available information (and even less that is officially confirmed) about the use of these drones over the years. The U.S. Air Force only officially acknowledged the Sentinel’s existence in 2009, two years after it was first spotted in Afghanistan and had been dubbed the “Beast of Kandahar.”

RQ-170s were used to monitor aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, something that was thrust into the public eye after one of the drones went down in that country in 2011, a major intelligence loss. RQ-170s likely also played a role in relation to the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes on Iranian nuclear sites last year, where they could have provided direct overhead coverage and intelligence for post-mission bomb damage assessments.

Sentinels are understood to have surveilled Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan in the lead-up to the raid that led to his death, which also occurred in 2011. This, as well as operations over Iran, are prime examples of the Sentinel’s ability to persistently surveil key sites even in denied areas. The preparations for and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve also followed a playbook with direct parallels, as well as notable differences, to the Bin Laden mission.

The stealthy RQ-170s have also deployed to South Korea in the past, from where they likely conducted flights at least very near to North Korean airspace. The drones have also been at least deployed elsewhere in the Pacific, as well.

Between 2022 and 2023, Sentinels may have flown missions in the Black Sea region, gathering intelligence on Russian forces on the heavily-defended occupied Crimean Peninsula. A satellite image available through Apple Maps showing an RQ-170 at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Italy has lent some further credence to those reports. Sigonella has been and continues to be a hub for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance flights over the Black Sea. It is unclear when the image was taken, but it looks to be from a relevant timeframe based on the visible state of construction elsewhere at the base.

Though much still remains to be learned, the remarks today from Lockheed Martin CEO Taiclet have added a small, but notable addition to the story of the RQ-170.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com