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The Defense Intelligence Agency produced this reference document, dated 31 March 2010, under its Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. It reviews the state of the art and likely evolution of high-energy laser weapons, including chemical, solid-state, fiber and free-electron lasers, as well as beam control and the history of DoD laser research. It concludes that electrically powered lasers could make megawatt-class weapons practical and that spacecraft laser weapons are conceivable within 20 years. It also recommends ways to protect spacecraft from laser damage.
UNCLASSIFIED//F811. 8FFll!l*L 1!1!11! t!IIU:!Y Pointing Telescope I I single mode lasers Figure 6. Incoherent Combination of Single Mode Lasers at the Target Pointing Telescope - I'-y--' Single mode lasers Figure 7. Incoherent Combination of Single Mode Lasers in a Fiber Combiner This larger fiber does not maintain the beam quality of the individual laser beams and results in performance roughly equivalent to separately focusing the beams onto a single spot. For example, seven individual fibers have been combined into a larger fiber to produce a single beam with a beam quality of about 6 times the diffraction limit and 9 UNCLASSIFIED//F81it 8FFIIIAI!: 1!181! &••LY
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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 31 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.