AAWSAP DIRD, State of the Art and Evolution of High-Energy Lasers, March 2010

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.

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Figure 16. MDA Airborne Laser in a Boeing 747-400F
Also in the mid-1990s, the Navy concluded that the DF laser wavelengths would not
propagate adequately for use as weapons at-sea and began the development of free
electron laser technology to open more favorable propagation opportunities in the near
infrared wavelength region. To-date, FEL technology has been demonstrated at the 10
kW average power level and Navy-funded scale up continues with an ultimate goal at
the MW-class.
Currently, all three services are developing solid-state slab and fiber laser technologies
to support modest size, near-term, 100 kW-class weapons. These should be capable of
engaging short range tactical targets such as UAVs, rockets, artillery, mortars, and
swarming boats. The Air Force and the Special Operations Command (SOCOM)
installed and are testing a chemical laser weapon system test-bed in a C-130, called the
Advance Tactical Laser, to evaluate the utility of a laser addition to the AC-130] gunship
(Figure 17).
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