US Navy pushed to develop containerized HELIOS laser for wider ship defense

The post describes efforts to create a containerized/palletized variant of the Navy’s HELIOS (60kW-class) directed-energy laser, enabling faster integration across more ship types and potentially ashore. The novelty is the modular container form factor, which could accelerate fielding of laser counter-drone/close-in defense without deep ship integration, bridging toward higher-power JLWS concepts.