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 n…