Participating in uncrewed missions hosted by the Portuguese Navy, the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) had a chance to conduct jam-proof laser-based communications links between two maritime vessels.
The tests were part of NATO’s Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping using Maritime Uncrewed Systems (REPMUS)/Dynamic Messenger mission. POLARIS laser communications terminals (see image above) from Lithuanian firm Astrolight enabled beyond-the-horizon communications between the NRP Dom Francisco de Almeida and NRP Dom Carlos I ships without the link being detected by any sensors on other ships, drones, or land-based defensive assets.
Co-founder and CTO of Astrolight, Dalius Petrulionis, explained that the laser link is well-suited for maintaining radio silence in GPS-denied environments, even during heavy rain and fog. “With persistent and rising GPS jamming attacks in NATO territories, we needed to test it in real-life conditions as soon as possible. Exercise results showed that our laser technology is a reliable and operable alternative to radio-frequency-based communication — now it’s time to scale."
POLARIS laser terminal testing was guided by Petrulionis while at sea during this year’s REPMUS’25, NATO’s largest unmanned maritime exercise. The terminals transmitted gigabytes of data with low latency and high reliability.
Petrulionis noted that the “Astrolight team spent two weeks living and working with the Portuguese Navy aboard two of their ship fleets, installing their POLARIS laser terminals. They established undetectable ship-to-ship laser communications, exceeding their initial targets by 200%, and proving that first-time experiments can go better than planned when the technology is well-developed.”
