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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€il.t.k YSE &P•tv Contents Summary.................................................................................................................v Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 Basic Attributes of Kinetic Energy and HEL Weapons ......................................... 1 Elements of an HEL weapon ............................................................................... 2 Laser Devices ......................................................................................................... 3 Laser Fundamentals ........................................................................................... 3 Chemical Lasers ................................................................................................. 5 Solid-State Lasers .............................................................................................. 6 Rod and Slab Lasers ........................................................................................... 7 Fiber Lasers ....................................................................................................... 8 Ultra-Short Pulse Lasers .................................................................................. 10 Free-Electron Lasers ........................................................................................ 11 Beam Control and Atmospheric Propagation of Laser Devices .............................. 12 Brief History of DoD Laser Weapon Research ....................................................... 16 Laser-Material Interaction ................................................................................... 20 Vulnerability of Spacecraft to Laser Radiation ...................................................... 22 Projection of Future HEL Weapon Capability ........................................................ 23 Recommendations ................................................................................................ 25 Sources of Further Information ............................................................................ 26 Figures Figure 1. Utility of KE and HEL Weapons ................................................................. 2 Figure 2. Elements of an HEL Weapon System ........................................................ 3 Figure 3. Basic Laser Concept................................................................................. 4 Figure 4. Cylindrical Gain Generator for HF Chemical Space Based Laser ............... 5 Figure 5. Common Solid-State Lasers and Their Wavelengths ................................ 6 Figure 6. Incoherent Combination of Single Mode Lasers at the Target.................. 9 UNCLASSIFIED/ fFOA OFFI€il.t.k YSE 8,.LY iii
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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.