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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office and dated 31 March 2010. It was produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program. It reviews chemical, solid-state, fiber, ultra-short pulse and free-electron lasers, as well as beam control, atmospheric propagation, DoD laser history and how spacecraft could be damaged by lasers. It projects that electrically powered lasers could enable MW-class weapons and spacecraft laser weapons within 20 years. It ends with shielding recommendations for spacecraft.
From the source:Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 3/31/10, 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 the development of high-energy laser weapons and notes that, although lasers had already become important military tools for ranging, guidance, and other lower-power uses, true weapon-class systems remained limited by power generation, beam control, atmospheric propagation, and logistics. The report reviews major laser types along with the optical, tracking, and thermal-management systems needed to make them militarily useful. It argues that high-energy lasers can offer important advantages over kinetic weapons in speed, precision, and low collateral damage, especially against softer or fast-moving targets, while also emphasizing that practical deployment has long been hindered by hazardous chemical fuels, thermal blooming in the atmosphere, power-supply constraints for mobile systems, and waste-heat removal.
UNCLASSIFIED/ fFOA: OFFI€1.t.k YSE &P•tv - • - ·0 sensor -·-· -·sensor _ . - • \ 0 error .-............................................. Tracker Stabilization Electronics • 0 0target Gimbal Figu re 10. HEL Weapon Basic Tracking and Pointing Controls The concept descr ibed above and illustrat ed in Figure 10 was used for beam control systems until the 1980s. At that point, t here was a desire for higher performance systems using larger pointing telescopes but with lower jitter. This conflicting set of requirements (mo re massive t elescopes and higher structura l resonant frequencies) was first resolved in the Sealite Beam Director (SLBD) shown in Figure 11. I nstead of attaching the IRU to the pointing and tracking t elescopes then at tempt ing to mechanically st abilize them, t he I RU was loosely mounted inside the pointing telescope . Usin g an optica l reference att ached to the IRU, its measurement of base motion disturbance was relayed to t he SLBD's optical alignment sensors which commanded sma ll fast steering mirrors to stabilize the HEL beam. The large telescope was then al lowed to Figure 11. Sealite Beam Director experience the base motion disturbance even though t he HEL beam passing th rough it was stabil ized . UNCLASSIFIED/ fFOA OFFI€l.t.k YSE 8,.L\f 14
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Official release, from the pursue 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.