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Royal Navy ships are a step closer to being fitted with a high-powered laser weapon. The Dragonfire Laser Directed Energy Weapon (LDEW) is a powerful 50kW device developed by US and British scientists - and it now looks set to be powered by technology inspired by Formula 1 racing car technology.

The Ministry of Defence has said Dragonfire could be deployed to protect its naval and land forces from missile threats, drone attacks and artillery bombardment.

And now it has found a way to power the energy-hungry device, thanks to Williams F1 team. The MOD said a new system, based on Le Mans motor-sport technologies, has demonstrated it can manage the energy demands of Dragonfire, which is being developed by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (dtsl) and a consortium of contractors including MDBA, QinetiQ, Leonardo-Finmeccanica GKN, Arke, BAE Systems and Marshall ADG.

Australian website 9News reports: "Dragonfire draws huge amounts of power. And its lithium batteries are prone to overheating and starting fires on board a ship."

An MoD spokesperson told UK Defence Journal : "The Flywheel Energy Storage System (FESS) uses innovative high-speed and lightweight flywheels to provide high-power electrical pulses that these future systems require, reducing the impact of these systems to the rest of the ship, while avoiding the widely reported safety concern around battery-based systems.

"Fundamental to the success of the project has been the collaborative testing of the FESS at both UK and US facilities. This was undertaken under the Advanced Electric Power and Propulsion Project Arrangement (AEP3), an arrangement between Dstl and DE&S in the UK, and NAVSEA’s Electric Ship Office and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in the USA. USA testing was also supported by US Coalition Warfare Program (CWP) funding.”

A flywheel is fitted inside a car’s transmission to store rotational energy when the clutch is disengaged. It stores energy when the clutch is disengaged, and can shift the energy back once its engaged after a gear change. The concept could be adapted by storing the energy required to fire a laser in a number of flywheels, reports 9news.

It was tested in the US and UK, using a virtual ship power system based on a Royal Navy warship design. The US Navy has already installed and test fired a laser weapon on a vessel, the USS Ponce.

Andrew Tate from Dstl said: "This technology was originally developed by the Williams F1 team.

“We saw an attractive option to bolster defence capability through the provision of more robust and futureproof power systems for naval ships.”