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

U.S. Navy Admiral Daryl Caudle is the 34th Chief of Naval Operations and a longtime student of directed energy who’s currently on something of a media blitz in support of the service’s vision of a “laser on every ship.”

I originally submitted a list of 18 detailed questions, including many proposed by readers, to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations for Caudle to answer. Public affairs officials subsequently requested a pared-down list to ensure timely responses, which are printed in full below.

What does the U.S. Navy’s five-year road map for the development and fielding of high-energy laser weapons look like?

Our approach is to move on two tracks simultaneously. First, we need to get useful directed-energy capability into the hands of sailors now. Containerized systems give us a way to accelerate that effort on existing ships, shorten integration timelines, experiment operationally, and build the tactics, training, maintenance practices, and human expertise we will need as these weapons mature.

At the same time, we have to design future ships with directed energy in mind from the beginning—with the electrical generation, energy storage, cooling, combat-system integration, and optical architecture required to support much higher-power systems. I have been clear that the Navy needs to be moving from the hundreds-of-kilowatts range toward megawatt-class capability as the technology and engineering support it. The objective is not another demonstration.

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