The USS Ponce was a demonstrator not a dead end. When LaWS sailed on Ponce in 2014 it proved a concept that was previously the stuff of lab reports and enthusiast blogs: a shipboard solid-state laser could acquire, track, and apply effects against asymmetric threats at sea. The Office of Naval Research and NAVSEA reports from that period described LaWS achieving optical engagements against small boats and unmanned air systems and operating in the Arabian Gulf environment under real operational stresses.

That initial success created a logical experimental roadmap: scale power, improve beam control, harden optics for maritime atmosphere, and fold directed energy into ship combat systems rather than leaving it as an add-on experiment. Two follow-on pathways illustrate how the Navy tried to execute that roadmap in the next decade. One path concentrated on power scaling and thermal-management at the 100+ kW class with a demonstrator hosted on an amphibious platform. The other focused on tactical integration into a destroyer combat system at a lower initial power level but with tighter sensor-to-shooter coupling. The former is best represented by the Office of Naval Research Solid State Laser - Technology Maturation (SSL-TM) effort and the LWSD Mk 2 tests aboard USS Portland. The latter is represented by Lockheed Martin’s HELIOS installation aboard USS Preble.

Measured outcomes and hard numbers matter because directed energy is not magic. LaWS on Ponce operated in the roughly tens-of-kilowatts range, enough to disable cameras and to destroy small propeller UAVs at the tested ranges. Portland’s LWSD Mk 2 MOD 0 demonstrated operations at significantly higher delivered power, with publicly reported engagements in 2020 and 2021 that included a successful UAV defeat and a later surface target engagement in the Gulf of Aden. The Navy and program reports place the Portland demonstrator in the 150 kW neighborhood for the Mk 2 family, a meaningful jump in potential effect against larger or more resilient targets. Meanwhile HELIOS was delivered as a 60+ kW-class system in 2022 with a designed growth path to higher power via modular additions. Those three power points - tens of kW, roughly 60 kW, and 150 kW - frame the technical problem set the Navy is trying to solve: how to get the right effect at the right range in real maritime atmospherics.

Those numbers expose the engineering trade space. Electrical generation and distribution aboard a ship, thermal management to evacuate tens to hundreds of kilowatts of waste heat, beam pointing and low-jitter tracking in a seaway, and atmospheric propagation loss due to aerosols and humidity all conspire to limit both effective range and engagement tempo. Practical tests have translated these broad points into concrete engineering lessons. Portland’s amphibious-ship form factor helped because those hulls provide comparatively generous electrical and cooling margins versus a DDG without major rework. HELIOS, by contrast, prioritized integration with Aegis so the laser could be employed as part of an automated sensor-to-shooter loop even if starting power was more modest. Each design choice buys capability in one dimension while introducing constraints in others.

Operational implications are twofold. First, directed energy is uniquely cheap-per-engagement for the classes of threats it can defeat: small UAS, many kinds of surface craft, and optical sensors. This is not a replacement for kinetic defenses against high-end anti-ship missiles, at least not yet. Second, the mission set for shipboard lasers is layered defense, not single-tool defense. The Navy’s Layered Laser Defense testing and the SSL programs show an intent to combine sensors, dazzlers, and higher-power hard-kill beams into a graduated response that reserves missiles for the highest end. ONR and industry demonstrations of all-electric, higher-power beams have even produced a public result: a ground-based demonstration that defeated a surrogate subsonic cruise-missile target, which signals the technical trajectory the programs are aiming toward. Translating a White Sands ground result into a rolling, spray-cooled, at-sea intercept remains non-trivial, but the test is a data point worth noting.

Programmatic reality cuts into rhetoric. The Navy’s public documents and congressional reviews show a multi-pronged acquisition posture: field some 60 kW-class systems quickly and pursue higher-power options through experimental projects. HELIOS under the Surface Navy Laser Weapon System family intended to give fleet operators an integrated, Aegis-linked laser while SSL-TM and related efforts pushed toward the 150 kW regime and beyond. The Office of Naval Research remains central to maturing components and tactics while prime contractors package them for shipboard use. Expect incremental deployments rather than a single platform leap.

If you are evaluating risk and timeline, focus on three metrics the fleet will watch closely: delivered optical power on target in real maritime conditions, continuous engagement time before thermal or electrical limits force a pause, and software maturity for automated aim-point selection and battle-management integration. Those are the figures that convert a demonstrator into an operationally useful shipboard system. Tests aboard Portland and installation aboard Preble provide empirical results for two of those metrics. They do not yet prove a universal solution for every threat, but they do validate the core architectural approach: platform-adapted power and cooling, modular fiber laser scaling, and hard integration with ship combat systems.

Policy and sustainment questions remain. Directed-energy weapons shift logistics from magazines and ordnance handling to power generation, skilled technicians, and spare optical modules. Rules of engagement and maritime legal frameworks will need clarification for non-kinetic effects such as dazzling. Meanwhile adversaries will adapt by hardening sensors, employing obscurants, or massing low-cost swarm tactics, which means lasers will be necessary but not sufficient. The prudent way forward is continued at-sea testing on diverse hull forms, clear measures-of-effect for different weather regimes, and investment in tactics that integrate lasers with electronic warfare and kinetic shooters.

Conclusion: Ponce was a pathfinder and not an endpoint. The sequence of experiments that followed - Portland’s higher-power engagements, HELIOS’ integration into a DDG combat system, and the ONR-supported LLD demonstrations ashore - shows a coherent, iterative approach to fielding directed energy at sea. The technical challenges are real and measurable. The tests to date give the Navy both cause for guarded optimism and a clear list of engineering and operational problems that still must be solved before lasers become a default layer of fleet defense.