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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/ /rtiUl 9FFl&IAl W&li 8,.lV Explosively Driven Generators ......................................................................... 16 Pulsed High-Power Microwave Sources ................................................................ 17 Pulsed Electron Beam Sources ......................................................................... 17 BWOs, TWTs, and RKAs ..................................................................................... 17 Split-Cavity Oscillators ..................................................................................... 18 Virtual Cathode Oscillators ............................................................................... 18 Magnetrons ...................................................................................................... 18 Gyrotrons ......................................................................................................... 19 Impulse HPM Sources ...................................................................................... 20 SNIPER............................................................................................................. 20 EMBL ................................................................................................................ 20 H-Series HPM Sources ...................................................................................... 20 The Phoenix HPM Source .................................................................................. 22 The GEM II HPM Source ................................................................................... 24 The Jolt HPM source ......................................................................................... 24 Mesoband Sources ........................................................................................... 24 HPM Antennas ...................................................................................................... 25 Narrowband Antennas...................................................................................... 25 Wideband and Ultrawideband Antennas ........................................................... 27 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 29 Figures Figure 1. Paschen Curve for Air ............................................................................ 13 Figure 6. Cross-Section Drawing of HS With Point Geometry Converter, Brewster Figure 7. HS Output Section With the Point Geometry Converter Feeding an Figure 2. Example of Marx Generator Circuit ........................................................ 16 Figure 3. Orion HPM Testing Facility....................................................................... 19 Figure 4. Active Denial System With FLAPS Antenna ............................................ 20 Figure 5. H2 With Large TEM Horn and PGC Output .............................................. 21 Angle Window, and Extended-Ground-Plane Antenna ........................... 21 Extended-Ground-Plane Antenna Through a Brewster Angle Window ... 22 Figure 8. Phoenix Radiated Pulse at 8.5 Meters ................................................... 23 Figure 9. Phoenix Radiated Spectral Content ....................................................... 23 UNCLASSIFIED/ /fiAR AEEJCJOP 1155 ON! X iv
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 37 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.