The Navy’s push for shipboard laser weapons just got a new entrant

This article is republished with permission from Laser Wars, a newsletter about military laser weapons and other futuristic defense technology.

The U.S. Navy has awarded a modest contract to America’s largest shipbuilder for a new high-energy laser weapon for maritime operations.

Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) and defense contractor EO Solutions—not to be confused with Australian laser weapons provider Electro Optic Systems—received a $3.8 million Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) for a “Counter-Group 3 Marinized MOSA Laser for Navy” (Gr3MMLN) in June through the Naval Surface Technology & Innovation Consortium, a public-private partnership that develops advanced surface warfare capabilities in collaboration with academia and non-traditional defense contractors.

The Gr3MMLN OTA emerged from a 2024 Navy solicitation for a prototype counter-drone laser weapon dubbed the Adaptable Transportable Laser Weapon System (ATLAS), a U.S. defense official familiar with the project told Laser Wars. The ATLAS solicitation called for a containerized laser weapon with a baseline output between 30 and 100 kilowatts that can operate from the flight deck of a surface combatant “in a stressing naval environment for an extended period without degradation or damage,” according to a statement of need obtained by Laser Wars.

While the statement of need detailed anticipated funding of $50 million for ATLAS, the defense official said that the $3.8 million Gr3MMLN OTA was likely just to support experimentation and testing with an existing system. Funding for that contract came from a $5 million congressional addition to the Navy’s fiscal year 2026 budget for an “enduring high energy laser,” according to budget documents. (Not to be confused with the U.S. Army program by the same name.)

Gr3MMLN is the newest laser weapon initiative to break cover as part of the Navy’s renewed pursuit of “a laser on every ship.” The fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that the House passed in late July contained $5 million in funding for a containerized version of the service’s 60-kilowatt High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system, as well as an additional $2.5 million for a separate “Containerized Maritime High Energy Laser Weapon System.”

Meanwhile, the Office of Naval Research recently awarded defense contractor Attalon a $17.1 million contract modification to continue work on a 400-kilowatt laser weapon under the SONGBOW program the service initiated in 2025. (The status of the unnamed laser system that Lockheed Martin’s CEO claimed the company was testing with the Navy in the Red Sea remains unclear.)