By Stephen Borgna
Marketing Communications Specialist
Throughout the 20th century, naval power underwent major shifts in philosophy. The era of battleships was defined by massive vessels that had raw displacement (the ship’s weight, measured by how much water it pushes aside), were heavily armored, and maintained a massive arsenal of guns on its decks. This came to an end after the Second World War, when missile-armed surface combatants and carrier aviation became the foundation of naval power with designs centered around precision weapons and sensor capabilities rather than sheer size.
That focus is now entering a new phase. One of the defining features of next-generation warships will not be how many missiles or aircraft they can carry, but how much electrical power they can generate and distribute. Energy capacity, not tonnage, is emerging as the decisive measure of capability.
Modern naval systems are placing unprecedented demands on shipboard infrastructure. New and advanced systems such as directed energy weapons, hypersonic missiles, advanced radar arrays, electronic warfare systems, and more all require massive and reliable energy reserves. Meeting these requirements is pushing navies to redesign platforms around integrated power systems rather than traditional architectures.
From Kinetic to Photonic Air Defense
The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Preble fires its Lockheed Martin HELIOS laser weapon during U.S. Navy trials. Naval lasers like HELIOS work by focusing intense energy on a small point until the target overheats, burns, or structurally fails. It’s less about slicing cleanly through metal and more about delivering sustained, precise heating that disables sensors, electronics, or key components in seconds.
Naval guns and missiles have been the primary armaments on warships for decades now. A third weapon class, Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs), is slowly being added to warships now that the technology is starting to mature.
The U.S. Navy’s interest in shipboard lasers dates back decades, but early systems like the AN/SEQ-3 LaWS, tested aboard USS Ponce in 2014, were largely concept demonstrations. The real step toward operational use came with the HELIOS system (High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance). Awarded to Lockheed Martin in 2018 and delivered to the fleet in 2022, HELIOS represents the Navy’s first effort to permanently integrate a directed energy weapon into an AEGIS destroyer’s combat suite. The system is a 60-kilowatt class laser designed not only to disable drones and small craft but also to blind or burn out enemy electro-optical sensors, with a roadmap toward higher power levels in the years ahead.
Directed energy weapons aren’t limited to laser weapons like the HELIOS. Other classes of DEWS include high-power microwave (HPM) weapons that emit bursts of microwave energy that fry or disable electronics, and acoustic/sonic directed energy weapons that utilize high-intensity sound or infrasound systems to incapacitate personnel or disable sensors that are typically used in niche non-lethal roles.
Lasers like HELIOS provide clear advantages compared to traditional kinetic weapons. For starters, a laser can engage a target at the speed of light, has nearly unlimited shots that are only limited by shipboard power, and are precise against small or fast-moving targets like small, inexpensive drones that are rapidly becoming a nuisance on the battlefield. But they also highlight a growing challenge: energy demand.
Even at its current rating, HELIOS requires tens of kilowatts of sustained, stable electrical power, along with the cooling capacity to keep the beam coherent. Truly robust missile defenses will likely require lasers in the 150- to 300-kilowatt class or higher that will push shipboard power architectures harder than ever before.
Hypersonic Missiles are the Future of Precision Strike Capabilities
The U.S. Navy is planning to retrofit its three Zumwalt Class Destroyers to serve as naval hypersonic launch platforms.
While DEWs offer a substantial leap in naval defense, hypersonic missiles present a fast, highly lethal, tough-to-defend new precision strike capability. Capable of traveling at speeds greater than Mach 5 while maneuvering unpredictably, hypersonics are designed to penetrate even the most advanced air defense networks. For the U.S. Navy, the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) program is working to incorporate sea-launched hypersonic missiles into the fleet. Unlike earlier generations of strike weapons, CPS requires not only advanced guidance and thermal protection but also substantial launch infrastructure and electrical support within the host vessel.
The Navy’s three Zumwalt-class destroyers were selected as the branch’s first ships to field hypersonic weapons, in part because of their advanced Integrated Power System (IPS). Each Zumwalt can generate nearly 80 megawatts of electrical power, far more than legacy destroyers, giving it the headroom to accommodate future high-demand systems. Beginning in the mid-2020s, the class is being modified with new Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells capable of handling the size and stresses of CPS.
Like naval lasers, hypersonic integration also stresses how important power is becoming in warship design. Beyond propulsion and hotel loads (the part of a ship’s electrical demand that powers everything not directly related to propulsion or combat systems), ships must now allocate enormous reserves for weapons that demand both raw energy and capable power distribution systems. The Zumwalt’s IPS was ahead of its time in this respect, but as hypersonics move from niche capability into the broader surface fleet, the Navy will need to rethink power architectures across its vessels. The next generation of naval strike power will not be limited by missile design alone, it will also be defined by whether ships can generate and deliver the electricity to support these weapons.
Advanced Radars and Sensors Will Stress Naval Systems Even Further
No naval system illustrates the growing hunger for electrical power more clearly than the Navy’s newest radar and sensor suites. The transition from the long-serving SPY-1 phased array to the AN/SPY-6 family of radars is a generational leap in detection and tracking capability. Built on modular radar “building blocks” called Radar Modular Assemblies (RMAs), SPY-6 offers exponentially greater sensitivity and range. This allows ships to track smaller and faster targets including stealth aircraft, ballistic missiles, and hypersonic weapons.
But this leap in performance comes at a cost. The AN/SPY-6 system generates dramatically higher electrical demand and cooling requirements compared to legacy systems.
The Navy’s Flight III Arleigh Burke destroyers were redesigned around SPY-6, not because of hull form changes, but because their power and cooling plants had to be expanded to sustain it. Each array draws megawatts of power at peak operation, and when paired with evolving electronic warfare systems and combat data processors, the ship’s electrical backbone must be both resilient and flexible. Unlike traditional radar sweeps, which presented steady and predictable loads, modern active electronically scanned arrays create dynamic, pulsed demands on the ship’s power grid. This means that advanced radars no longer just consume power, they actively shape the architecture of naval vessels.
As with directed energy weapons and hypersonic launch systems, the lesson is the same. Sensors are only as effective as the power architecture behind them, and future warships will require not just more generation capacity but also rugged power distribution systems able to deliver clean, uninterrupted current under combat conditions.
Future Naval Systems Will Depend on Advanced Naval Power Distribution
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The DDG(X) (Next-Generation Guided-Missile Destroyer) concept from Program Executive Office Ships (PEO Ships) as presented in the 2022 Surface Navy Association symposium.
Traditionally, warships have always been able to operate consistently on steady-state power loads. A steady rate of power would typically be able to sustain a warship’s operation throughout deployment whether cruising, transit, or firing its main guns or missile systems. This new generation of naval capabilities is poised to change these power requirements.
All the newer technologies discussed above and others that heavily depend on electricity are inclined to cause rapid, large spikes in power draw from the ship. A laser weapon does not fire utilizing a combustion-based propellant that’s ignited by a primer such as what you’d see from a 105mm shell, for example. When it’s fired, it’s going to draw significant and sustained amounts of energy from the ship’s power plant. Using it for extended periods against threats is going to cause significant stress to a ship’s energy reserves and distribution infrastructure.
Lasers are only one piece of these new demands. Advanced radars like the AN/SPY-6, high-power microwave systems, and the integration of hypersonic launchers all impose sharp, pulsed electrical loads that legacy ship designs were never built to accommodate. Researchers at the U.S. Naval Academy have shown that in realistic combat scenarios, aggregate power demand can temporarily exceed a ship’s installed capacity.
The need for both larger generation power margins and far more resilient power distribution infrastructure is paramount for new construction and the retrofitting of existing vessels. Without enough reserve power, power buffering, or energy storage, a ship could fail to meet all its power needs when its systems are under substantial amounts of stress.
The Navy’s Zumwalt class destroyers are an example of a platform that was built with these concerns in mind. Instead of driving the propellers directly from the engines, the Zumwalts’ IPS system distributes and redirects power across propulsion, sensors, weapons, and wherever else it’s needed on the ship. The entire ship’s nearly 80 megawatts of available electrical power can be flexibly redirected.
Looking further ahead, the Navy’s planned DDG(X) destroyer, or Next-Generation Guided-Missile Destroyer, will likely be designed around the power considerations discussed earlier. Designed as the successor to the workhorse Arleigh Burke class of destroyers, DDG(X) is expected to incorporate an Integrated Power System similar to the Zumwalt class but scaled for greater efficiency and growth. Its design studies emphasize the ability to reallocate electrical power flexibly across propulsion, sensors, and high-demand weapons like directed energy systems and hypersonic launchers. In effect, DDG(X) is being conceived as a warship built around power availability to ensure the Navy can integrate the next generation of combat systems without redesigning its electrical backbone.
MIL-DTL-22992 Class L Has Delivered Reliable Rugged Power for Decades
Amphenol Class L 22992 high-power, heavy duty electrical connectors are designed for high-current electrical loads and are the largest cylindrical Amphenol power connectors available. Class L heavy duty connectors are ruggedized and designed for high power military and industrial applications that need maximum reliability.
Amphenol’s Class L MIL-DTL-22992 power connectors have a long heritage of delivering rugged, high-current performance, and are still an ideal interconnect solution for meeting the challenges of next-generation naval power distribution. With current ratings up to 200 amps per contact and robust voltage and insulation performance, Class L provides the backbone for distributing megawatt-class loads across a ship’s critical systems.
Class L also supports the resiliency and flexibility required by integrated power systems. Multi-pole layouts, redundant contact options, and proven environmental sealing mean that Class L connectors maintain performance under shock, vibration, salt spray, and washdown, all while ensuring mission continuity even in damaged or degraded conditions. This ruggedness allows ship designers to trust that power will be delivered where and when it’s needed regardless of the operational stresses of harsh environments.
Hybrid insert configurations that combine high-current and low-level signal contacts also enable system designers to integrate monitoring, control, and sensing alongside primary power distribution in a single interface. This reduces weight, complexity, and maintenance overhead.
Amphenol Commercial Class L heavy duty power connectors are the commercial equivalent of the MIL-DTL-22992 qualified connectors.
As naval vessels evolve toward all-electric architectures capable of supporting directed energy weapons, electromagnetic launchers, advanced sensor arrays, and more, Class L provides an interconnect solution that scales with demand. Its established pedigree, broad accessory compatibility, and proven long-term durability make it an ideal foundation for future-ready naval platforms.
Amphenol Aerospace Class L connectors are also available in commercial configurations as well. Visit Amphenol High Power and High Voltage Connectors and Contact to learn more.