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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIA-08-0912-005) is dated 28 January 2010. The Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office prepared it under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program. It gives an overview of pulsed high-power microwave sources and the technologies needed to build them, including insulation, cathode materials, high-voltage switching, pulse generators and antennas. The paper concludes that progress requires better cathodes, switching and insulation, and that compact ultrawideband antennas will remain difficult to build.
From the source:Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 1/28/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD surveys pulsed high-power microwave (HPM) source technology and argues that such systems remain of military interest because they can disrupt or damage electronic systems with short, intense electromagnetic pulses. The report reviews the main source types and the supporting technologies they depend on, including high-voltage insulation, switching, cathode materials, antennas, and pulse-power generation. It emphasizes the difficulty of building systems that are compact, efficient, and practical to field, since short pulse durations, antenna size, heating, detectability, and beam or signal quality all impose hard engineering limits. Its overall conclusion is that the technology has significant potential military value, but that further progress depends on advances in cathodes, predictive modeling, high-speed high-voltage switching, and low-loss insulation, while compact ultrawideband systems will remain difficult because of basic physical constraints on antenna design.
UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOR OFFl@IAL l!ISI!!! 9HLY Conclusion This paper provided an overview of the current state of HPM sources and the technologies driving their development. Advanced cathode materials, computer codes for more predictive ability in electron beam generation and propagation, high-speed switching at high power, and low-loss insulation techniques are just a few of the areas where advancement clearly is needed for progress to occur. Advancements in photoconductive solid-state (PCSS) and other solid-state switching and sharpening devices appear to finally be reaching a level of development such that they may soon be of use in high-voltage systems. If PCSS switching devices capable of higher operating voltage and extended lifetime are made available, variations of the phased array will become the HPM source design of choice, given the inherent advantages. More compact antennas are greatly desired; however, the physics of the radiation process requires structure sizes on the order of one-half wavelength of the lowest rad iated frequency. With demanding levels of directivity and gain also requirements, compact UWB antenna designs will continue to be difficult, if not impossible, to realize. UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOR OFFI&IAI: Wliliii QfslLV 29
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