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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 OFFl&I.t.k YSE &P•tv Introduction The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the current state-of-the-art and potential evolution of megawatt (MW) class high-energy laser (HEL) weapons. Implications for space vehicles in or beyond earth orbit will be addressed. It is rare today to find an individual who doesn't have some concept of a laser weapon. From Orson Wells's Martian invaders in War of the Worlds, who used them with chilling efficiency, to the now-classic Star Wars movies, the capabilities attributed to such devices have grown with time and with writers' imagination. While most fictional depictions of laser weapons (and many news stories) are without sound basis, these devices do offer the potential for a whole new class of weapons and capabilities which may complement (but not replace) existing kinetic energy (KE) weapons and electronic warfare. BASIC ATTRIBUTES OF KINETIC ENERGY AND HEL WEAPONS KE weapons (bullets, shells, missiles, bombs, and so forth) require a finite period of time to reach the target but are then able to destroy it instantly. They can deliver immense quantities of explosive energy and destroy large areas. This makes KE weapons most effective at engaging hardened, large, or stationary targets. Collateral damage concerns, such as a desired target next to a hospital, enemy forces near friendly forces, or a sniper target in a crowd can sign ifi cantly limit the opportunity to use KE weapons. Randomly moving targets also present a challenge for KE weapons due to difficulties in predicting the target's location at the future time of arrival or in tracking the target with sufficient accuracy. High Energy Laser (HEL) weapons, by contrast, begin delivering the laser beam's energy to the target at the speed of light. However, they require a finite dwell time to accumulate enough thermal energy (heat) on the aim point to achieve the desired effect (similar to a blowtorch). The strength of an HEL weapon is its ability to precisely deliver a limited quantity of energy to a small spot with little collateral damage to nearby objects or people. The instantaneous measure of a focused laser beam's effectiveness is called "irradiance" and is measured in power per unit area over the laser spot (typically watts/cm 2). The beam's ability to inflict damage, by heating during a time interval, is called "fluence" and is typically measured in joules/cm 2 . Fluence is simply irradiance x time and one joule is equal to one watt for one second. Speed-of-light energy transfer, coupled with precision tracking, allows HEL weapons to efficiently engage softer targets which are highly maneuverable, only visible for short periods of time, or at extremely long range. Although the initial cost of a laser weapon might be hig h, the logistics trail is short and the cost per shot is comparatively inexpensive since the only major expendables are laser chemicals or electricity. Figure 1 compares t he relative strengths and weaknesses of KE & HEL weapons for different classes of potential targets. Just as there is a wide variety of KE weapons (ranging from bullets to precision guided munitions to nuclear weapons) for different types of applications, one could envision a range of future HEL weapons at different power levels, wavelengths, weights, volumes, and costs which would be best suited for specific applications. UNCLASSIFIED/ fFOA QFFI&I.t.k YSE 8,.L\f 1
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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.