NATO member orders high-energy laser for drone defence

Electro Optic Systems (EOS) Holdings Limited, an Australian defence technology company, announced on August 8 that it has secured an order for a new high-energy laser weapon system for counter-drone operations. The order, valued at €71.4 million (approximately $83.43 million/£61.59 million), was placed by a European member state of NATO.

The system, which uses 100kW high-energy laser technology, is designed to defend against drone attacks. According to the company, the contract includes the production and delivery of the capability, as well as spare parts, training, and documentation. The order is a world-first export for the company’s 100-kilowatt class laser defence system and is scheduled to be fulfilled by EOS’s Singapore operations between 2025 and 2028.

The laser system has been designed for mobile deployment on a truck. The company states that the system includes algorithms, threat detection, target acquisition, and beam-locking systems to ensure high performance. It will be integrated into a multi-layered air defence system as part of the project, the press release states.

Dr Andreas Schwer, Chief Executive Officer at EOS, stated that the system can engage targets instantly, hitting them at the speed of light, compared with a bullet or cannon round, which takes a few seconds to reach the target. He added that the system is “very accurate and has a very low cost-per-shot – less than 10 cents per shot.” The high power level of the system allows it to “shoot down 20 drones per minute,” according to Dr Schwer. 

The high-energy laser takes 1.3 seconds to defeat a Group 1 drone, which can be thought of as a DJI Mavic, or the FPVs used in Ukraine. Specifically, this refers to the length of time that the drone would have to be illuminated by the laser for it to be defeated. Larger Group 2 drones take 4.4 seconds using a 50 kW laser. It takes 700 milliseconds for the system to slew to a cued target, and another 600 milliseconds to achieve a target lock, according to a specifications sheet for the High-Energy Laser Weapon.  The company has a history of providing counter-drone capabilities using kinetic weapons and has developed the new high-energy laser system to address what it describes as a critical market need to defend against drone swarm attacks economically.

Tech explainer: High-energy laser weapons

A high-energy laser (HEL) is a type of directed-energy weapon that uses a concentrated beam of light to damage or destroy a target. The term ‘laser’ itself is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. These weapons operate on the principle of delivering intense thermal energy to a specific point on a target, essentially acting like a highly precise, long-range blowtorch.

This involves four key elements; a power source, a lasing medium, which could be a gas, crystal or liquid, a set of mirrors and a beam director, which includes the mirrors and directs and focuses the laser beam. In general terms, a laser works by pumping energy into the lasing medium, which causes the electrons in the medium to get excited. This can be quite a significant amount of energy. 50 – 100 kW in the case of the EOS high-energy laser sold to the European customer. To put this into perspective, 100 kW is enough energy to run approximately 1,000 high definition TVs simultaneously. Or, if taken as a measure of power, it would generate enough power to lift a 2,000 kg object to a height of five metres in a second.

In a nutshell, the power directed at those electrons is very significant. When the electrons calm down and return to their original state, they release photons, which are particles of light that then bounce between the mirrors, causing other electronics to release more photons in the same wavelength. This is a process known as stimulated emission, and it amplifies the light which is then passed through a partially reflective mirror. The mirror creates the highly concentrated beam of energy which is then sent to the beam director – the optical system making the fourth component – which aims the collected energy at a small area of a target, heating it up rapidly. The effect is cumulative, meaning the laser must maintain contact with the object to achieve the desired damage. 

Lasers have been of interest to defence for decades, and the US Navy used a deuterium fluoride chemical laser to intercept a TOW anti-tank missile in flight in 1978, for instance. The first drone shoot-downs may have occurred some years even before that. Over time, the mediums used to create the laser energy, the ability to carry power, and the ability to track and detect targets has improved and increased. This has happened simultaneously with an increase in the number of small cheap threats that must be intercepted to give lasers a firm role in emerging force structures. 

Tech profile: EOS High-Energy Laser Weapon

The High-Energy Laser Weapon from EOS is designed to intercept and destroy small drones out to distances of 3 km and combines customer-defined radars and electro-optical systems into a single turret on a stabilised gimbal. It is available with between 50 kW and 150 kW configurations and can be powered from a 20 foot ISO container, which provides up to 200 shots – presumably at 50 kW – or plugged into an external mains power supply for unlimited shots. The system can also be used for “optical sensor denial” at ranges of 15 km, if required. This could be used to dazzle the sensors of a coordinating drone, for instance, preventing a swarm from effectively targeting an area or system.

Calibre comment 

High-energy laser weapons do appear to be a valuable part of a layered air defence network providing drone defence, at least for point locations. However, there are some nascent applications for vehicles like the Stormcrow active protection system from BAE Systems, which may offer affordable protection of armoured vehicles using laser interceptions. Lasers are particularly appealing because of their cost per intercept – around 10 cents in the EOS case – which is often compared to the cost of an air defence missile. This comparison is unhelpful for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that air defence is rarely considered in terms of its cost-effectiveness, the systems are often more expensive in terms of money than the thing they protect, or, in other cases, the thing they protect is of immense value. Take a naval air defence missile, for example. 

Something like an SM-6 might cost around $9.5 million per missile intercept, which is a staggering price. But the cost of failure for an SM-6 could result in a sunk Arleigh Burke (the ships that carry SM-6), or worse, a sunk aircraft carrier. In that scenario, the SM-6 has to work and it has to work all of the time, regardless of what has happened to it. This leads to long production times and high production costs. But that care is one of the reasons that relatively few Russian cruise missiles reach their targets in Ukraine; Western cruise missiles are very good at what they do. 

Small drones of the type addressed by the EOS High-Energy Laser, and others in the Group 2 category should be seen as a different type of threat requiring their own solutions. They are cheap threats and easy to produce in large quantities, they also have the potential to cause immense damage but missiles are not suited to addressing Group 1 drones especially. As a result, many European nations will likely pursue a layered solution that combines electronic warfare, with cannons and potentially lasers to provide protective areas for the most critical elements of their forces. 

By Sam Cranny-Evans, published on August 18, 2025. Credit for the lead image is EOS.