Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• The U.S. Navy recently rebooted the SSL-TM, a 150-kilowatt laser weapon aboard the USS Portland.
• This returned effort could signify just how valuable lasers are against the growing drone threat—and experts say the U.S. is by no means falling behind its adversaries.
• Laser weapons have an advantage over missiles because the cost per shot is significantly lower.

In an age of drone warfare, can a laser weapon ever become obsolete? Apparently not, if the U.S. Navy’s recent reboot of the Solid State Laser Technology Maturation (SSL-TM) is any sign of things to come. As of 2019, the 150-kilowatt laser weapon graced the bow of the USS Portland, a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock. The Portland is less of an attack vessel than a landing platform to deploy troops and aircraft. Once the pride of the Navy, the SSL-TM rendered a dazzling but brief performance, killing a drone in a much-photographed test in the Gulf of Aden in 2020 before being abruptly shelved in 2023.

Now, it’s back in service—a move that shows just how valuable lasers have become amid the new threat of drones. In September 2025, the resurrected SSL-TM shot four drones out of the sky during a large-scale, drone-focused exercise called Crimson Dragon. Is the revamp of a retired laser a sign of dire need on the part of the U.S., or simply an attempt to boost America’s laser arsenal?

“I’d say the U.S. is definitely not behind,” says Benjamin Jensen, director of the Futures Lab and senior fellow for the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. “U.S. lasers have proven way more successful, for example, than China’s Silent Hunter that did not do well.”

China’s much-vaunted Silent Hunter Laser Directed-Energy Weapon looked impressive on paper and in controlled demonstrations, but quite literally bit the dust after Saudi Arabia bought it. The system was overpowered by sand and heat, proving incapable of homing in on fast-moving drones. While the U.S. may move at a slower pace in terms of production, the systems it produces are higher quality.

“China is definitely producing larger volumes, but they don’t have as good of [Ingress Protection] yet in the laser space,” says Jensen. “I mean companies like Lockheed and RTX have been working on this for a long time.”

Even then, if laser weapons development eventually turns into an all-out arms race, it would likely be for defensive rather than offensive purposes, Jensen adds.

The refit of the SSL-TM is a portent heralding a new era for the U.S. Navy—one that will likely see ships equipped with lasers not only to take out drones, but swarms of small surface vessels as well, according to Steven Wills, PhD, a navalist for the think tank Center for Maritime Strategy at the Navy League of the United States.

“We’ve been working on these concepts for ship defense for a very long time, both lethal and non-lethal,” Wills says. “The laser’s been in development for a number of years as a lethal tool designed to set fire to a ship, cause damage to it, cause it to veer off course.” He adds that drone warfare in Ukraine has likely renewed interest in equipping ships with laser weapons.

“I think [the SSL-TM reboot] feeds into the whole idea of a concerning drone threat,” he says. “Both unmanned drones and manned small boats could be employed by various adversaries, at this time most notably the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy.”

The Navy has kept a weather eye on laser weapons for decades as an effective means of stopping enemy ships, particularly in the aftermath of the 2000 suicide boat attack on the USS Cole, Wills explains. Lasers consume a lot of power, but the Navy—grappling with overhauling its shipbuilding capabilities—can easily refit older ships with shorter-range laser weapons to duke it out with drones.

In fact, laser reboots like the SSL-TM can double not only as drone killers but also as effective military coupons to address the issue with missile cost.

“There’s a desire to get to the laser because you’re not spending nearly as much money to knock down these fairly low-cost platforms. It’s very expensive to shoot down these drones,” because the cost to manufacture and launch missiles is so exorbitant, Wills says.

Since the Navy also trains service members to shoot multiple rounds from different weapons to destroy incoming targets, munitions expenses can easily pile up, Wills explains. However, low-cost-per-shot weapons such as lasers or railguns—which shoot dense metal like tungsten—could “really solve a lot of cost issues,” he continues. “Your ship then becomes its own magazine.”

Yet lasers aren’t always quite up to speed with how we imagine they should work. They never really have been, according to Jensen, who observes that complete operational success always seems just around the corner.

“We’ve been thinking about this for decades. It’s always that directed energy weapons seem like they’re ready for prime time, and then there are huge issues with power integration, integration into larger systems, and then sometimes even the atmospheric effects,” Jensen says. “The challenge you also run into is [that] even when [a laser weapon] does work, it tends to be a line-of-sight close-in weapons system. If I’m a large ship at sea, I want to kill things that are trying to kill me 10 if not 100 miles away—not two miles away.”

If China’s Silent Hunter taught the world anything from its dust-swept performance in Saudi Arabia, it’s that atmospheric conditions are nothing to sneeze at when it comes to laser weapons. Laser beams tend to slice through the atmosphere—and kill drones—better in cold, clear conditions. Heat, water vapor, and particles can scatter the beams.

This could lend itself to technology designed to disrupt lasers, according to Jensen. The concept of the ninja smoke bomb could become relevant on a larger scale.

“Remember, no weapons system is final. There’s always this thing in military called the constant tactical factor, that someone will find a counter-adaptation. And with lasers, atmospheric effects can really matter. So smoke, dust—these things actually dissipate the energy and make it harder to direct,” he says. “So even if we do get really good strong lasers on every destroyer, it’s not inconceivable that an adversary comes up with smoke and obscurants that make the laser less effective.”

Whatever the future may hold, it’s clear that lasers are gaining traction as weapons, be it on ships, ground vehicles, or as revolving turrets fortifying military bases. The laser is not yet a versatile stand-alone weapon, but it’s certainly becoming a standard element of modern self-defense.