Documents / Report
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//FIHl 8FFHil.t.k Wfili IH.k\f In 1973, a new chemical laser technology, based on deuterium fluoride (DF), was determined to be scalable to high power at mid-infrared wavelengths which propagate far better in the atmosphere than CO2 laser beams. The Navy and ARPA jointly built a multi-hundred-kW class laser and mated it with a 70 cm beam director. In March 1978, this integrated system succeeded destroying operational TOW anti-tank missiles in flight. The Navy then used this technology to produce the nation's first MW-class HEL weapon test bed. The Mid-InfraRed Advanced Chemical Laser (MIRACL, Figure 15) and the Sea lite Beam Director (SLBD, Figure 11) were installed and integrated at White Sands Missile Range in the mid-1980s and used for experiments by the Department of Defense. Subsonic drones and multi-mach missiles as well as strapped down ICBM boosters were among the many targets successfully engaged. 17 UNCLASSIFIED/ ,'P8"1 91"1"1!111it 1!191! Slit I
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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.