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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.
“Low Earth orbit”2 pages
UNCLASSIFIED/ fFOA. OFFI€il.t.L YSE er•tv • Component vulnerability - All spacecraft have essential components which are exposed and potentially susceptible to laser radiation. Solar panels, from either the front or back, could be damaged or shorted. Cabling among the solar panels and between the spacecraft and the panels could be damaged. If the mechanism which keeps the solar panels pointed at the sun were damaged, then the panels couldn't be rotated and would lose efficiency. Similarly, antennas used for communications or navigation are susceptible along with their RF/power cables and the mechanisms which keep them pointed. Many spacecraft use optical sensors to locate stars, the sun, or the earth's horizon for navigation or attitude determination. The loss of any of these types of sensors could significantly affect the spacecraft and could be accomplished fairly easily by a medium-to-large earth-based laser weapon if the spacecraft were in earth orbit or by a smaller laser system which was onboard another spacecraft. • Structural penetration - A unique vulnerabi lity of manned spacecraft is the requirement to maintain a suitable internal atmosphere. If the pressure-vessel portion of the spacecraft were penetrated, even in a small area, it could prove fatal. The design and operation of any spacecraft should consider these vulnerabilities if damage from laser radiation is a concern. In addition to thermal modeling and careful design/shielding, candidate components, materials, and surface treatments could be tested for laser radiation susceptibility in government laboratories or independently by purchasing commercial lasers. Projection of Future HEL Weapon Capability Chemical Lasers - Once the physical processes were reasonably well understood and determined to be scalable, MW-class chemical laser systems were quickly achieved by the late-1970s and still remain the sole source of that power level. Since then, the technology has matured which resulted in marginal efficiency improvements with very low probability major additional breakthroughs in this area. There are no first principles reasons why output powers could not have been brute-force scaled upward by another decade using larger gain generators but a few practical reasons (in addition to cost) precluded that happening: • Efficient atmospheric propagation of 10+ MW chemical laser beams would have required 10+ meter pointing telescopes which are unreasonable for any mobil e or portable (including ships) military applications. • The only possible military applications which don't suffer atmospheric propagation limitations are space-based however the weight, volume and consumption rate of chemicals would cause this to also become unreasonable and unaffordable. • There were better wavelength choices (and potential laser types) for conceivable non-mil itary applications such as power beaming to the moon or spacecraft in earth orbit and laser assisted propulsion of spacecraft. Solid-State and Free-Electron Lasers - The current (and probably foreseeable future) thrust in laser development and power scaling should be expected in the area of electrically powered lasers. This will probably be true whether the laser system is earth-based or space-based. These include solid-state (slab & fiber) as well as FELs. UNCLASSIFIED/ fFOA QFFI€il.t.L YSE 8,.L\f 23
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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.