Documents / Report
This Defense Intelligence Reference Document from the Defense Intelligence Agency, dated 1 November 2010, was produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. It describes nanosatellite technologies and proposes launching nanosats into orbit with laser Lightcraft propulsion. It also covers a weapon mission selection study and multi-megawatt laser options. The author recommends that the Department of Defense and NASA bring Lightcraft R&D back to the United States and restart the X-50LR flight demonstration program.
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To achieve the high precision required for a HEL Weapon,
The sensor and Beam Expander must maintain precise alignment
Figure 34. HEL Beam Pointer/Tracker (courtesy of the Directed Energy Professional
Society).
In summary, this new architecture has only the HEL module and the beam director. All
the measurement and correction functions are integrated into the beam director
without increasing the number of high power components usually required in a coude
path.§§ The three major advantages of this architecture are as follows (see Figure
35):***
• Minimizing complexity and component count: The optical control architecture has
far less than a dozen mirrors plus a turret window and two polarizers between the
HEL module and the target. The resulting beam line is considerably simpler,
smaller and lighter than current architectures. Almost every component in the
beam line performs multiple functions, thereby dramatically reducing the
component count. There is only one long-burn DM, one coarse steering mirror
(CSM), one FSM, and all of these are integrated into the beam director. This
approach also packages all beam control sensors, processors and drivers into the
turret assembly.
• End-to-End Boresight and High-Bandwidth Tracking: In this design, the HEL and
track illuminating laser (TILL) trackers are integrated onto the same focal plane
§§Coude is French for "elbow," meaning a beam of light is bent in a zigzag manner through an
optical train.
'"D. Kiel, Directed Energy Systems Symposium Short Course, Naval Post-Graduate School,
Monterey, CA, 2010.
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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 77 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.