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In this episode of From the Crow's Nest, host Ken Miller is joined by Dr. Christopher Lloyd, Senior Technologist for Directed Energy with The Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division Virginia.
The pair check in on several recent developments in the promising field of directed energy weapons (DEWs). Dr. Lloyd says that senior leaders with the Navy have realized that directed energy weapons can play an integral part in multi-domain operations. New prototypes and stronger ties between the Office of the Secretary of Defense, academia and industry partners make the capability one with few limits on its utility. Dr. Lloyd details how two directed energy weapon programs — the Optical Dazzling Interdictor (ODIN), a low-power laser system, and the the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system — have been significant wins for the Navy in allowing its sailors to become more proficient with this new technology.
Interested in taking a deeper dive into EW technology? Visit here to access the new 6-episode FTCN Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Series. Season 1of is powered by L3Harris. Episodes 1 and 2 are now available.
To learn more about today’s topics or to stay updated on EMSO and EW developments, visit our homepage.
Creators & Guests
What is From the Crows' Nest?
Featuring interviews, analysis, and discussions covering leading issues of the day related to electromagnetic spectrum operations (EMSO). Topics include current events and news worldwide, US Congress and the annual defense budget, and military news from the US and allied countries. We also bring you closer to Association of Old Crow events and provide a forum to dive deeper into policy issues impacting our community.
Ken Miller (00:10):
Welcome to From the Crows Nest, a podcast on electromagnetic spectrum operations or EMSO. I'm your host, Ken Miller, director of Advocacy and Outreach for the Association of Old Crows. You can follow me on LinkedIn or reach out to me via email at host at from the crows nest.org. Thanks for listening. In this episode, I am pleased to welcome Dr. Christopher Lloyd, senior Technologist for directed Energy at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dore Division. We are going to sit down and talk all things direct to energy, weapons, and high power microwave systems. Before I get to Dr. Lloyd, just a couple remarks. First and foremost, we are on the verge of releasing our inaugural from the Crow's Nest Chief Technology Officer series. The CTO series is a six part series powered by L three Harris, and greatly appreciate their support. The CTO series is a deep dive into key technology areas that are driving innovation and the development of cutting edge capabilities in EMSO.
Ken Miller (01:11):
So in this first season, we are taking a look at next generation EW systems to counter evolving threats with speed, agility, and resilience across the electromagnetic spectrum. It's a six part series where I sit down with industry leaders, subject matter experts, technologists, and go talk about a range of topics. This series has taken me to Clifton, New Jersey to a FA, and of course in our from the Crows Nest Studios, it is available to download, it's freed for everybody. It is available to download at crows.org/podcast, or you can follow the link in our show notes into the regular from the Crows Nest. But the actual series is located on the a c website, again at crows.org/podcast. Also, in a few short weeks, we are going to all be gathering at the Gaylord National Harbor Resort in National Harbor, Maryland for a OC 2024 that takes place December 11th, 13th.
Ken Miller (02:08):
The theme for this year's symposium is Electromagnetic Spectrum warfare, the Great Power Competition, and throughout this week, we are going to have some amazing sessions that are going to be taking a look at the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as the Red Sea tensions and what's going on in the Indo-Pacific region. A lot of the sessions and presentations that will be shared this week will align very nicely with the CTO series that we are also currently releasing. So this is a great opportunity to deep dive into what is driving EMSO forward globally. If you have not reserved your place, please do so today. Again, you go to crows.org and the AOC 2024 is taking place December 11th, the 13th at National Harbor Resort in National Harbor, Maryland. So with that, without further delay, I'd like to welcome Dr. Christopher Lloyd to from the Crows Nest. Dr. Lloyd, it's great to have you on the show. Thanks for joining me.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (03:05):
Thank you, sir. I appreciate being here. Thanks for the invite.
Ken Miller (03:08):
For our listeners here from the Crows Nest, they'll know that throughout the year we like to cover kind of an update on directed energy at least once or twice a year. I believe the last time we really focused on Director Energy, we had Christopher Barry on, it's probably end of last year or beginning of 2024. So we're long overdue for this discussion. I haven't had you on the podcast yet, so welcome to the show and it's great to hear from a new voice as well. So just to get started, since you are a new guest, could you tell us a little bit about your office, where you're at, dog in your office, and how you came to be in this position?
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (03:46):
Yeah, that could be a podcast in itself, I guess. But honestly, after getting my postdoc degree through George Mason, I was working at the Naval Research Lab as a chemist. I got told one day that the funding was elsewhere and we needed to start looking at laser research, and I had no idea what that was. Of course, learned to start working and coordinating with the folks down at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dorin here, doing some testing, making coupons and stuff like that for tests. Loved the job, had no issues or anything like that. I loved my time at NRL, but I wanted to do a little bit more hands-on work. Ended up coming down to Dore in 2009 to lead the lethality efforts going on on the laser side of the house here. Picked that up fairly quickly. What I had been doing when I was helping up at NRL, and ever since 2009, I've led the Navy's laser lethality efforts and team down here, which has grown tremendously. We have a great group of folks down here that are continuing that effort as I've now moved up to the position I'm in now, that's kind of how I got here. And Dahlgren obviously has a huge history of testing down here on the water. We've expanded those capabilities on directed energy. We have a huge team down here, a couple of divisions getting close to about 300 folks doing directed energy. And yeah, it's a great, great environment to be working down here.
Ken Miller (05:08):
The field of directed energy weapons, high power microwave capabilities, it is so dynamic. There's so much promise in terms of where it could go, especially when you look at how threats are evolving and just everything is changing the way we fight today. There's great promise in there. It's also a field that over the years seems to have the same struggles, and we'll talk about some of those moving forward, getting programs out of testing into the field across that Valley of Death and acquisition. We've had a lot of talk conversations amongst our communities about how do you integrate directed energy and EW earlier in development. We'll get to some of that later, but just from your vantage point, could you talk a little bit about some of the primary strategic goals of the Navy in terms of their approach to directed energy weapons and so forth, and how that is shaping how the Navy wants to fight in the future?
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (06:03):
Yeah, because of the tremendous forward progress on both the laser and HPM side of the house, there's been, I would say, a shift from is this technology capable to, can we maintain and sustain it once we get it out there, whether it's prototype or in multiple units and so forth. So with that comes a lot of testing. As you can imagine, there's a lot of confidence that can be built up from testing. I think that our senior leaders now in the Navy are really recognizing what directed energy can bring to the fight. There's obviously a lot of great attributes. There's definitely some things that you'll hear about a whole lot too, about the propagation and atmospherics that we are monitoring and things like that. But strategically directed energy is really going to help us out from multi-domain operations. We like to talk about it a whole lot from the counter unmanned systems perspective, but because the technology is advancing, we're able to open those mission sets up.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (07:02):
I mean there's really, I would say right now there's not many limits to what we could do with it. Now we have to get it there, and there's still definitely some technology advancements and things like that that have to happen specifically for the surface fleet. We're really looking toward non-kinetic capability for fleet defense, whether that's escort defense, terminal defense, things like that. But really trying to understand and get a better handle on how directed energy fits in the layered defense solution space with the current kinetic weapon systems and other non-kinetic weapon systems. So it's not a technology that's going to replace anything by any stretch. It's adding to our people like to mention that it's another arrow in the quiver, and that's exactly how we perceive it. It is going to help us from a layered defense approach. And again, from a multi-domain perspective, I believe we're just scratching the surface on what we'll be able to do with the technology.
Ken Miller (08:01):
So in terms of some of the progress that you've seen over the last few years, especially, you mentioned there's a lot of testing going on. What are some of the recent milestones that really as communities we should be focusing on and looking at as representative of that progress that we're making?
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (08:22):
Yeah, absolutely, and I think we'll maybe talk about this as we get a little further down, but there's a lot of connective tissue right now, strong connective tissue between the services, OSD, academia, the industry partners like that to really push this forward. So the prototypes that we are building and we are getting out there are absolutely crucial for us to understand how we ended up maintaining, fighting with those, maintaining 'em, sustaining 'em, things like that. We've had some recent successes in the Navy out there. Everybody knows this at this point, but there's several Odin systems in the fleet. There's the Helio system that's on the DDG out there right now. So those are the first systems that we're bringing out to much like some of the other services they're doing, particularly the Army where they're putting systems out there for their soldiers to see how to operate with them, to see what works, what doesn't work, and all that is lessons learned fed back into the next iteration.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (09:21):
In my mind, this is the natural evolution of an emerging technology. We can get frustrated all day when we go out and attest doesn't go our way or we don't get to a test, so to speak. But this is just how we continue that cycle of getting it there. It's not that we want hang our head because we didn't get where we needed to be. We're continuing to learn, and that's the message that's being kind of sent out through the Navy at this point with the technology. We're realizing that it has some capability now just understanding how we can keep it out in the field and have it available for the sailors, soldiers, Marines, whoever may be operating those systems is really where we're at right now. There's still definitely some s and t challenges to get there, but some of the mission sets that we would look at are very much engineering challenges right now. So the only way you can really get to the heart of understanding what those challenges are is put the systems out in the field and understand what, again, what's going to work, what's not going to work, and what we need to go back and provide more fidelity, if you will, for what the system should be able to do.
Ken Miller (10:26):
So you mentioned the Odin system and Helio, could you just for our listeners go in and talk a little bit about those two programs and what they're trying to accomplish with them
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (10:37):
As much as it can? Of course, Helios is on the US srel right now. It's a high energy laser. It has counter ISR capability, and it's the first of its kind, right? So there's a huge amount of success that's come with getting that system on that platform. In a lot of ways, it's Herculean effort to get anything on a DDG, but the fact that we've been able to put that system in integrated into that platform has been a huge success for us. And the Odin systems, likewise, I mean they are lower power, they're a little bit more mobile from a platform perspective, but getting eight of those out there has been a significant win for the Navy because the sailors are becoming more proficient with the technology. All of those lessons are being fed back into other units. The engineering challenges that we've seen with having those systems out there, we're able to refresh those units somewhat and really, really understand what it's taking to get those systems out there and those maritime environments to keep them operating.
Ken Miller (11:45):
I had the pleasure of actually being a guest on another podcast recently. I was with the Armada podcast with the host Tom Whittington, who I've had on this show a couple of times, and part of our conversation, we were talking a little bit, I was referencing an article in the Foreign Affairs magazine by Michael Horowitz talking about the evolution of how we think about defense. And he was making the case that in the past we focused heavily on mass and capacity, and now in the eighties nineties, we kind of started focused on precision. And now with how we see the world today and the evolving threat, we're moving toward this notion of precise mass. And in addition to that affordable and precise mass. And through that article, through that discussion, eew and directed energy keep coming to my mind because of that aspect of affordability, precision, it's for direct energy, especially a lot of it's replenishable, at least more so than conventional weapons. So with this increasingly complex world that we live in, the evolving threats, what role do you see directed energy and HPM and how we fight? What are some of the opportunities that we have yet to really even fully understand, but that are out there in terms of changing how we fight?
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (13:06):
Yeah, I think you touched on several key points there, and I do want to be sure everyone understands that it will be low cost per shot, but it's not a joke. But we like to make sure everybody understands that the first shot is expensive. You have that new technology, and again, this is something that every new technology will deal with. The first one off is going to be inexpensive, and the idea is that as you start to mature and optimize that technology, the later units are going to bring that cost down because you're getting into a little bit of that lifecycle side of the house. But when it's all said and done, yes, as long as we have power to those systems, whether that's on a vehicle, whether it's on an aircraft or a ship, we could have a deeper magazine. I won't say it's unlimited, but it's definitely a deeper magazine.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (13:56):
The logistical piece side of that is also a huge advantage as you're aware, as long as we have electricity, we have laser energy, and we don't have to worry about, and again, this is, I'm not trying to say anything discerning on the kinetic side, but we don't have to worry about the logistical problem of reload and resupply at sea. Surely there can be sparing that we have to deal with. If something goes down, everybody has to deal with that. But that logistical burden is somewhat relaxed with technologies like I would say, EW and directed energy. And the other thing I think and touched on it a little bit is as the technology continues to progress, the efficiency of those systems is going to get better. So right now, not to go into too many details about it, but the efficiency of our systems is somewhere between the 30 and 35% range on the laser side.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (14:55):
So we obviously are working to improve that. That's going to help us from swap C because it will help us bring the load on the power and the cooling down if we can have more efficient things like diodes and so forth that we can bring to bear and help optimize those systems. So as we start to see changes in the, I would say the technology as it's continuing to improve, we're only going to realize more so those additional benefits of directed energy. And the other part that I'll say with this, and again, we never want to talk about this technology as something a silver bullet, if you will hear that in the past, we are absolutely looking how we cooperatively will be doing engagements and so forth with other technologies. There's definitely benefits that directed energy will bring to kinetics. There's actually some benefits that kinetics can bring to directed energy. Same with some of the other non-kinetic systems out there. So looking at that and trying to really optimize how that solution space is going to play out is really, really a key area that we want to focus on. Not going out and doing the testing and shooting things down is great, but in future fights, we're going to have to really be coordinated with everything we have to bear to make everything more optimal.
Ken Miller (16:19):
You mentioned a lot of the component technology. I think when a lot of people think lasers, their mind goes to science fiction or I remember I was doing a congressional briefing a number of years ago, and I think we had Dr. Dave Stout come in and again, I'm, I'm not an expert in director energy, I'm even less of an expert in pop culture. And he put on his intro slide to the staff was the shark with the laser beam on it from Austin Powers. And I had never seen any of the movies since. I'm like, why do you have a laser? And I instantly regret making that statement because it just showed how completely out of touch I was with pop culture and it was a big joke there. But the point being is it's not just Fanta, it's not just science fiction. There's a lot of component technology that goes into making these, the cooling systems, the power generation precision as et cetera. Could you talk a little bit about how component technology is really driving development in this field? Because there's a lot of pieces that are evolving at different paces that are going to have to come together for the final system, the director energy weapon system that's out there and you go to a direct to energy conference and you just see some of the most interesting and almost esoteric type of technology out there. Talk a little bit about how that components aspect is driving directed energy.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (17:44):
Yeah, I think that's exactly what it's doing. We have a lot of areas right now that have come a long way just to throw out a few. I mean the power level of our systems and sources is one to point out immediately. We're beginning to learn how to scale those sources to keep them not growing in weight and volume and things like that. But again, increasing efficiency and learning how to more compactly develop those systems so that we can get 'em into the tight spaces that the services are looking at, right? It's not just a Navy trying to get 'em on a ship, but the Army's very much looking at putting bang on for bases and things like that. So more containerized type systems. Of course the Air Force has to deal with a much smaller swap sea constraints there. So that technology is really helping us.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (18:36):
We can drive power up and keep the weight per, we'll say, we'll call it kilowatt down, then you can start to open up many more applications for where we can put, so the sources are one thing, working with just getting more power out of those sources and having more efficient sources. Beam control is another interesting area, surely on the high energy laser side that we are paying a whole lot of attention to just because of the various applications and there's different size beam directors and things like that that we have to pay attention to when we're designing those systems. And there's a lot of components within the beam control itself that we still quite frankly need to optimize a little better and try to get to a more standard approach for doing that. So the idea is that when we build prototypes, we don't want to go off and build 10 or 12 different types of prototypes.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (19:33):
We would like to get to some standard way of doing that so that it stimulates the industrial base, the demand signal is there to keep long lead items on the shelf, things like that. And other areas like antenna design for the HPM, that's an area of active research right now, just trying to optimize what that could look like. And I mentioned the industrial base too. I mean, you could take this all the way down to a rare earth element level as well. And there's been plenty of reports, well, not plenty, but there's several reports out there that the GAO and other folks have done looking at supply chain issues, which are not just directly impacting directed energy, but all kinds of other systems out there. So we are just trying to pay attention to that and a whole lot of the s and t is focused on that. I would say at this point on laser NHPM, we're not locked in any specific, this is the future technology. The s and t is continuing to drive us, and it's continuing to help us optimize what those future systems are going to look like. And all the while we're learning all this great stuff with the testing and how we maintain them in Navy's case at sea and things like that. So keep getting swapped down and getting power up and optimizing our beam delivery methods are really the areas that are key focus.
Ken Miller (20:54):
I can imagine in some ways that the direct to energy development is a lot trying to jump on a moving train when it gets to military modernization, recapitalization efforts to try to reshape your force. You're constantly trying to maybe play not so much catch up, but just trying to make sure that you can put yourself in the best position to actually take advantage of where you're at. Does it feel like almost like a game of catch up all the time with this?
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (21:22):
As I mentioned earlier, if you take any single day, you could find something to be discouraged about. I would, and again, this is nothing that any other emerging program is facing, right? It's an education piece here where we have to just constantly make sure people are informed of the capabilities and limitations of the technology. We also have to make sure that we're laying in the right programs for the s and t side, because ultimately that's driving us where we're going from a transition perspective and what we want to put out there for our capability. All that's coupled in with the requirements from, of course at the sponsor level and in our case, the operations of Navy perspective. So yeah, I mean, I think that we're not in a surprising place with the technology. We're really not. I mean, I don't think I have to remind people this, but I do remind them that the directed energy is still fairly new and you compare it up to kinetics and missiles and things like that.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (22:24):
We're still learning. There's no question. Significant strides have been made across the board, but it's kind of just a natural progression. We're never going to build the first new widget of anything, put it out there and it's going to perform to the best it can. So we just have to make sure as we're marching along here that we're managing expectations. We're continuing to make sure if people understand that in all of these tests, whether they are successes or failures, that there's goodness coming out of that and people recognizing that is very important. So that education piece is extremely critical.
Ken Miller (22:58):
So I want to talk a little bit more about this. Trying to field new systems. Oftentimes the terminology is crossing the valley of death when you're trying to move from s and t research and development over into acquisition. Direct Energy has made some advances in that, in being able to successfully navigate that still. Obviously there's room for continued reform in that whole process that affects all of DOD. Looking at that challenge, what are some of the successes direct to energy has had and what are some of the maybe areas where we need to continue to look into make it easier for these advanced new technologies to get into the field and into the hands of a war fighter sooner?
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (23:42):
Well, I think starting at the s and t level, I've heard of several folks say this, and it's absolutely true. It's not enough for us to just go and start an s and t project and hope that that ends up in a technology, in this case, in directed energy, right? When we're working on these s and t programs, we have to be thinking we're at this point now where we're at a high enough, I'll say TRL level, that we need to be thinking about those illities, the maintainability, sustainability, availability, things like that as we're working through our s and t programs, because ultimately if we develop an s and t product that we think is going to transition, but when it gets to that point, the war fighters don't know how to use it, dunno how to implement it, dunno how to train with it, they're probably not going to use it.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (24:32):
So I do think there's a time and place where there's just pure s and t work that needs to be done. But now surely for some of the mission spaces we're talking about, we have to be thinking through that s and t as we're walking through those s and t efforts about how we are going to transition this. And on the flip side of that, we also have to come back to it, the education piece. We have to make sure that our transition sponsors understand what they're getting and can basically go out and have the right advocacy for it. I don't want to say a lot of times, but there's surely been cases where we have not, I'll say we haven't properly provided those messages and we've seen the effects of that. So there's definitely a push and pull to the getting bangs across the valley of death, if you will.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (25:22):
And the research and development and the s and t side is extremely critical, but it's just as important to make sure we bake into those efforts once we are pulling it to more the acquisition side that we have, have not thought about how we are going to implement those solutions for the warfighter. That is where we are with much of this technology here. And again, I am not saying that we definitely have still have s and t challenges to address, but some of our current systems and prototypes are really more in the engineering phase right now and just making sure that we have all of our people in place as we are pushing it over to the acquisition side, they have the appropriate pull and advocacy on their side to receive it.
Ken Miller (26:12):
So when I went to my first director Energy Professional Society Depths conference, I think it was like 2018 timeframe, I remember distinctly, we had a tabletop there and people would come up to the tabletop, I represent Association of Vote Crows, ew. They came up to us, they're like, what the hell are you doing here? Kind of like this is a directed energy, not ew. And over the years we've worked very closely with depths on a number of different things just on the education piece and you could see the communities coming together and now there's much more of a conversation of how directed energy NEW, we can leverage each of those capabilities. I bring that up because a lot of the discussion was, you mentioned multi-domain operations. We're also in this drive for multifunction systems where you have one box doing multiple things, and that's very important for EW because we no longer have a separate EW system per se. It's a multifunction system. It does EW and other things directed energy is also in that. What steps do you think we need to take to get EW and directed energy technology considerations earlier in that development process? And you mentioned with the war fighters also bringing the war fighter feedback earlier in development. What do we need to do to get that baked in more than it is today?
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (27:32):
Yeah, no, I think you touched on exactly where I was going to go with that question is the war fighters do amazing things. There's no question. They're out there solving the problems on the fly, and a lot of times as a technical team or technical guy or gal, we say, here's the technology, here's what we'd like for you to go do with it. And when they get it, they figure out how to do other amazing things with it we never thought about, right? So I really believe that the training piece on that and making sure they're involved in that evolution from s and t to getting it out to the field and surely from a deployment perspective is really a key piece there. It really is amazing. I'll say even with the systems that are test beds and that we have out on ranges and things like that, bringing in, the Army does a great job with this bringing in the soldiers.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (28:27):
We've done this from the systems, we filled it even in training sessions and prior to deployments where you get 'em in there and they start asking all these questions and it just makes sure your wheels turn even more as a technologist saying, ah, well we sat there and kind of built up the system. We didn't even think about that application for it. So it really is going to, once those systems are out there, and I won't say speak for ew, but I think it's a very similar progression there, being able to work out how we can optimize bringing two capabilities like that together with current weapon systems, I think is going to be important for us going forward. And we can do analysis and we can model these things all day long, but we won't see the true advantages and what those capabilities can bring to bear until we get 'em out there. There's surely going to be some great synergistic effects when it comes down to just not just D and Ew, but on the kinetic side as well. I mean, again, we're talking about setting up more of a layered defense approach. We need all those capabilities, so we also need a way to coordinate those. That's something that the war fighter surely can help us understand and help us guide us in a better direction to when we start talking about bringing those systems together and how we would set up coordinated engagements, if you will.
Ken Miller (29:58):
When we talk about EMS o electromagnetic spectrum operations, we talk about it being an inherently joint mission. And certainly even through your answers here, you've mentioned numerous times how working with other services, could you talk a little bit about how your office and the Navy works with other services because direct to energy is going to be a joint capability.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (30:18):
Yeah, absolutely. I can't foot stomp enough how much the directed energy community in the last, I'll say 20 plus years has really come together. We always joke early in the early phases, there's definitely good arguments that have taken place, but that is how we've gotten to where we are. No one is afraid to disagree. There's a lot of leveraging and joint testing and analysis that goes on. We've been working with all of the services and agencies as well as lots of the industry partners of course, and FFRDCs and places like that throughout the years. So it's ever growing. But there is a very tight community for directed energy right now where there's not a week that goes by that we're not talking to the army, the Air Force, the MDA, the APLs of the world. So it has no doubt strengthened and it's really the reason why any of us, whether it's Army, Navy, air Force are where we are is because of that tight coordination.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (31:29):
We never had all the money we wanted early on, so we really leaned on each other more now that there's a little bit more of a budget available, certainly in some of the services more so than others, that connection has just gotten tighter and a whole lot of times not just at the directed Energy conference, but we meet up with each other, we coordinate with each other. And again, from my perspective, being a lethality lead for so long, every time we would do a test on the Navy side, I would pick up the phone and call the Air Force and RV and say, Hey, we're doing this. Anything you guys want to add, you want to piggyback. And they would likewise to do the same thing. And that has benefited us big time to help us get to where we are and really try to drive some of the requirements that each individual service has at this point.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (32:16):
Private industry, same thing. They're included in that as well. We would not be where we are without them right now. Those guys lean forward for us. We also coordinate with them just as much as we do with the other services to help them understand what we are looking for, what our requirements are so that they can go out and build the best possible system that they can. And then lastly, the international, this is an area, I don't want to say it's near and dear to my heart, but I've been involved in a lot of NATO activity over the past 10 years, and the strengthening of the NATO groups in the directed energy field has been significant in that timeframe, at least that I've seen it. We've had definitely everybody's aware of some of our closer allies, but even some that are in the NATO that we don't coordinate with Ton are still making significant advances in this technology to the point where they're looking at prototypes as well and they're asking all the right questions.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (33:16):
I think if you would go and ask anybody, probably at the OSD level, they would say all of the countries reach out and are trying to set up collaborations and agreements so that we can not just in directed energy, but in particular directed energy to help move that technology forward. And really that's only helping all of us. I'll say the more globally we're looking at directed energy as solution, there's a lot of good incentive for whatever industrial base, whether that's a team in Great Britain or a team in the Netherlands, whatever that's everybody is talking, there's only certain stove pipes that you can stick with when you start talking about that, getting those international partners involved and just opening the scope so that it's not just a US effort going forward. So again, can't say enough about how far our international partners have come and just the D community in general. It's a great team to be a part of, and I've just been fortunate enough to be a part of it for over 20 years now.
Ken Miller (34:21):
Yeah, it is a great community. I think there's a lot of similarities between the EW community and the direct energy. We kind of come from the same physics background, so to speak. We're dealing with a lot of the same. So it is been a real pleasure working with the community, partnering with depths, as I mentioned. So kind of just to wrap things up, looking forward, we actually, 2025 is going look a little bit different. We're looking at how do we grow the defense budget, but we also have a lot of competing interests. And I think sometimes when we're talking advanced technology or some of these areas, whether it's director energy or ew, we kind of get into the zero sum mentality where if you're going to fund one thing, you have to take the money from somewhere else. But in today's evolution of military technology that we can't afford, that we have to proceed on multiple fronts and adapt. So looking forward, what are some of the things that you're really looking at kind of focusing your energy on in terms of where DE is going that's going to keep you up at night and just kind of keep you moving forward?
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (35:25):
Yeah, I mean the easy answer to that is budget, right? I'm trying my best not to say, Hey, the only reason we're not further along is we don't have money. There is some truth to that, but I think we can still do it better in particular areas, fleet coordination, at least on the Navy side. We've talked about it a lot here about how important it is to bring in the sailors and the Marines and the other services, the war fighters there as well. But again, educating and making sure the right folks, our requirements flow up, so they usually flow up from places from the fleet and our COCOMs and things like that. So we need to make sure that those guys are tracking and again, understand what's capabilities look like, what the timelines are to deliver it. Of course, with everything going on in the world today, there's a huge push to what technology can we bring to bear right now?
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (36:21):
And so making sure they understand that is a critical piece right now for our community is surely for us in the Navy here. So I'm trying to do what I can to strengthen that coordination. And the other piece there too is just at the OSD level, there's definitely good stuff going on with directive energy at the OSD level, making sure that the Navy maintains its presence and is passing the information up there so that at that level, decisions and equities can be included on the Navy front for things that are being considered. Because you're exactly right. I mean, we always hear that the TOA, if you will, for the budget is not going to change much. So what are you willing to sacrifice slash move around in there to make sure some of this cutting edge technology is included? And it is a tough choice.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (37:15):
I mean, I completely respect and understand the decisions that are made at the operations Navy level. They have a whole lot of things that they would love to bring to the fleet and not enough budget to do that. So we are just trying to do our best to work within the confines of the funding and the budget we have. And honestly, I'll just say this and maybe pat the Navy on the back a little bit. I think we've done a really great job with that. We had these successful systems that have gone out. Our budget could be more, of course, nobody's ever going to say I'm good with my budget, but we are doing some really amazing things, and the s and t side of our budget has been rock solid. We have strong support on that side of the house. We have strong support on the transition side as well as like I've been mentioning.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (38:10):
But the s and t is really what's driving us, and again, as we've talked about through the podcast here, pushing that technology and really optimizing it so that the folks on the acquisition side have a lot stronger belief in it and understand that, okay, I can envision this being out there in my fleet or from the Marine Corps perspective, from an expeditionary side of the house, and I can really see this fitting in there. There's definitely, from my perspective too, working with the teams uptown that are having to make those decisions. And again, I try to do my best to provide the proper amount of influence as well as understanding of where things are so that they can make the best possible decisions they can, and hopefully it works out in our advantage. Right.
Ken Miller (38:58):
Well, that's all the time that we have. And Dr, it's great to meet you in person here to have you on the show. Really appreciate the insight you bring on this, and I think it's an area that we have to continue, like you mentioned, the education piece where we're working together, the EW communities direct to energy community and really look forward to staying in touch and working with you here in the future.
Dr. Christopher Lloyd (39:22):
Yeah. Thank you very much, Ken. Thanks for having me on. And just my last shout out will be to the community and the folks out there listening, just keep working hard on this directed energy is in our future, and we're going to do everything we can to make sure we get that capability out to the war fighter. So I appreciate and respect all the efforts that are going on across the community services industry, academia, all that, that's helping us get there. So really appreciate it and appreciate the time with you today.
Ken Miller (39:50):
That will conclude this episode of From The Crows Nest. I want to thank my guest, Dr. Christopher Lloyd for joining me. Also, don't forget to visit crows.org/podcast to begin downloading our Chief Technology Officer series, our CTO series, episodes one and two are available at crows.org/podcast. The series is powered by L three Harris. It's great discussion and a deep dive into EW technology, so you won't want to miss that. Also, once again, December 11th to 13th is a OC 2024 in National Harbor, Maryland. Hope to see you there. As always, we enjoy hearing from our listeners, so please take a moment to review, share, and subscribe to this podcast. You can also email me at host at from the crows desk.org. That's it for today. Thanks for listening.