How Nato is using unjammable lasers to defend against Russian sabotage ...Middle East

Nato is deploying “unjammable” laser systems to defend top-secret military communications from hybrid warfare attacks by adversaries such as Russia.

Advanced laser technology will allow militaries including Britain’s to deliver large quantities of data at high speed safe from interception, sabotage and electronic warfare campaigns that have targeted traditional networks including radio, satellite systems and fibreoptic cables.

The technology, which uses infrared lasers to communicate between moving or stationary objects on the ground, at sea or in space, was developed by the Lithuanian start-up company Astrolight, one of few European companies developing such capabilities, backed by Nato’s defence innovation body, Diana.

“We take the laser and point it to the other object very precisely,” Laurynas Mačiulis, the chief executive of Astrolight, told The i Paper. “You can reduce the beam of the laser to a very narrow point, making it almost impossible to intercept. From the side you cannot see it. It’s a very faint laser so it doesn’t scatter.”

The laser system was successfully tested during Repmus 2025, Nato’s largest unmanned maritime exercise, off the Portuguese coast in September. At sea, jamming is a major problem, able to distort satellite, radar and radio communications.

The military relies primarily on radio, but because radio waves are longer they are more “spread out”, unlike narrow lasers, making them less secure and easier to detect. Certain radio frequency bands can also become congested, resulting in reduced bandwidth and delays in transmission, and if transmissions are not encrypted, it can be relatively easy for adversaries to listen in.

During the Nato drill, Astrolight’s Polaris terminals demonstrated an unjammable ship-to-ship laser link between two vessels in wet and foggy conditions, which went undetected by sensors on other participating ships, drones, and land assets.

“We maintained stable communication between those ships to horizon-limited distances,” Mačiulis said. “They transmitted 100 Mbps per second and were not detected. This was a high amount of information and proved that the system works in an operational environment. It allows militaries to share battlefield awareness, radar data, high-resolution data, video and everything, and all securely.”

Lasers are not new in war. They have been used for everything from targeting and range-finding, and are increasingly being used as weapons. The US has poured billions into developing “directed-energy weapons”, especially for anti-drone technology, while last year Britain’s DragonFire laser system took down high-speed drones in a UK first.

Communications via lasers are also not new. Back in 2001, two European satellites exchanged data using a laser beam. Today, SpaceX’s Starlink system of nearly 9,000 satellites in low Earth orbit uses optical links, while the EU’s IRIS² constellation of 290 satellites will use high-speed laser transmission from 2030.

Nick Brown, equipment intelligence director at defence intelligence company Janes, said the main benefits of encoding communications into lasers were that “military forces can share huge amounts of data in very short periods of time and – unlike radio transmissions, which bleed into the air around the antenna – with very little chance of interception, enabling forces to communicate covertly”.

Recent acceleration in optical technologies could herald the beginning of widespread use of laser communications in warfare. And the growing threat to more traditional communications is making that more important than ever.

For years, Russia has been orchestrating a multi-agency campaign of hybrid war against the West including electronic warfare, and this has escalated since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Much of the Baltic and eastern Europe has experienced jamming and spoofing of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) such as GPS and the EU’s Galileo, while undersea data cables and pipelines have been cut in suspicious circumstances.

Nato has warned that targeting lines of communication will feature in any future conflict – and the alliance’s militaries need reliable communication.

“A conundrum on the modern battlefield is that military forces have a huge appetite for data, but every radio, radar and SATCOMs [satellite communications] transmission is an opportunity for your opponent to intercept your message and locate your position,” said Brown.

Lasers, however, are “immune to traditional electronic warfare broadcast jamming, which is very prevalent on modern battlefields”, he added.

As such, lasers offer a powerful and resilient alternative to these communication methods, as well as a backup, making them a major asset in any future conflict where Russian electronic warfare could degrade the military’s vital networks.

Dr Thomas Withington, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, said the laser communications could “help to augment existing communications systems that Nato relies on… in a way that not only increases capabilities but improves resilience [and] helps to deliver an advantage over Nato’s potential adversaries.”

Mačiulis observed that we are increasingly reliant on satellite networks, which traditionally use radio frequency, but “lasers make this type of communication invisible to electronic warfare”, which can jam signals from the ground and in space.

Lasers also enable satellites “to transmit a large amount of information at very large distances, in space, tens of thousands of kilometres and more”.

Astrolight’s Danish subsidiary is focusing on building secure satellite communication based on lasers, with plans for an optical ground station in Greenland, supported by the European Space Agency.

As with any technology, there are drawbacks to using lasers. One obvious problem is that lasers only travel in straight lines. “So you need a clear line of sight, and the transmitter and receiver need to be very precisely aligned, which is hard to achieve when you’re mobile and things get in the way – trees, hills, buildings, the curvature of the earth and so on all block transmissions,” said Brown.

“Large, powerful lasers can be ‘bounced’ off satellites or aircraft, to overcome some line-of-sight challenges between headquarters echelons and distributed fire support units or between warships, for example, but it remains a real-world drawback for many military operations, such as dismounted infantry running in and out of cover.”

Environmental conditions, especially rainy, foggy or windy weather, can also affect performance.

“Laser does have its own vulnerabilities,” said Withington, an expert in electronic warfare, radar and military communications. “Lasers get badly affected by things like dust in the atmosphere which distort that signal and cause it to lose some strength.”

However, Astrolight’s terminals appear to have functioned even in difficult weather conditions during Repmus 2025.

Withington added that lasers also needed enough power to transmit signals in a military context, for example, on a warship, with only a finite amount of power to run all the ship’s systems. The system also had to be safe and easy to repair in the field.

But lasers will only become more central to warfare, with recent trials opening to door to new opportunities, including on submarines and underwater drones.

“Successful trials have been conducted using blue/green lasers to transmit data through the water column at meaningful distances,” said Brown.

Unlike most laser, blue-green laser – which has a wavelength of around 470 – 570 nanometres – can penetrate deep underwater without its energy being absorbed by the sea.

Traditional communications for submerged submarines have been limited to extremely low frequency (ELF) radio over distance; acoustic telephone in close proximity; or antenna masts or a buoy from the submarine to the surface – which is suboptimal for a submarine trying to avoid detection.

While the ranges for lasers underwater are shorter than when using ELF radio, “the data rates are much higher and the point-to-point transmissions are more secure, as well as being silent, which is vital for submarine survivability”, Brown said.

It also means vessels do not need to be tethered to a host submarine or recovered to retrieve sensor data for analysis, opening up new possibilities for subs and unmanned underwater vehicles.

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