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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• The thermal control paints applied to the spacecraft's surface shou ld be tolerant of
laser heating and not change their characteristics .
• The spacecraft structure should be designed to be as resistant as possible to
penetration of laser energy.
• Potential materials and design approaches should be evaluated by testing for
resistance to laser damage. This can be done using commercially availab le lasers or
using ava ilable government testing facilities.
Sources of Further Information
Only one professional society in the United States is centered on development of high
energy laser and high-power microwave weapons and technologies: the Directed
Energy Professional Society (DEPS). This organization holds a variety of conferences
each year focused on various aspects of directed energy weapons. All of t he
conferences have portions that are unclassified, and some have classified sessions.
Additionally, half-day and full-day introductory or special topic courses are frequently
taught prior to the first day of the meetings. Examples of DEPS conferences each year
are given below; further information can be obtained from its website (www.DEPS.org):
• Directed Energy Systems Symposium.
• Directed Energy Programs and Capabilities Conference.
• Solid-State and Diode Laser Technology Review.
• Ultrashort Pulse Laser Workshop.
• Directed Energy Test & Evaluation Conference (cosponsored with the International
Test & Evaluation Association).
• Annual Directed Energy Symposium.
Other societies (U.S. and foreign) have conferences and publications related to the
general fields of lasers and optics. Two major examples are:
• SPIE (originally the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers) who have
many conferences annually and sponsor a major event called "Photonics West".
Their web site is www.spie.org.
• American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) has an annual spring
conference on Beam Control. Their web site is www.aiaa.org.
• Air Force Institute of Technology (www.afit.edu) offers a web-based course on HEL
weapon technology and systems.
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