Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to his Department’s news story entitled Advanced future military laser achieves UK first, published on 19 January 2024, what the next steps are for the DragonFire development effort.

Commissioned by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) Chief Scientific Adviser through the Defence Science and Technology (DST) Directorate and delivered by a joint Industry and Dstl team, the DragonFire Technology Demonstrator has undertaken a series of trials to develop the understanding of the potential capabilities of laser weapons. With the success of the recent trials in the Hebrides, DST and the joint team are currently evaluating the trials results and developing plans to accelerate the testing of the DragonFire laser against representative targets in more challenging scenarios. This work is done in coordination with MOD’s Complex Weapons Directed Energy Weapons Team who are looking at how Directed Energy Weapons systems can be rapidly transitioned from technology into capability on behalf of the Front-Line Commands.