Documents / Official release
This Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIA-08-1011-001), dated 1 November 2010, was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications program. It covers nanosatellite technologies, laser Lightcraft propulsion, a weapon mission selection study and a multi-megawatt laser study. The author recommends that the Department of Defense, working with NASA, bring laser Lightcraft propulsion research back to the United States and restart the Air Force X-50LR test flight program.
From the source:Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 11/1/10, 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 examines laser-propelled “Lightcraft” as a possible low-cost method to launch very small satellites into low Earth orbit by using a remote high-energy laser to supply most of the propulsion energy rather than relying entirely on onboard energy sources. The report combines a survey of nanosatellite trends with a review of “Lightcraft” propulsion concepts, vehicle design, beam-control requirements, and mission studies, and argues that the most promising application is the launch of nano- or pico-satellites, especially Earth- and space-observing payloads of a few kilograms or less. It presents the concept as potentially much cheaper than conventional multistage rockets for very small payloads, while also noting significant practical constraints including strict beam-riding geometry, atmospheric losses, demanding pointing and adaptive-optics requirements, and heavy dependence on large ground-, sea-, or air-based laser infrastructure. Overall, the document presents laser “Lightcraft” as a technically plausible launch concept whose attractiveness depends on whether the supporting laser and beam-control system can be made reliable and economical at operational scale.
“Lockheed”2 pages
UNCLASSIFIED/;'POR: OPPICIAE USE 014Lf In order to launch a laser-propelled Lightcraft nanosat or picosat from the ground, sea, or air, it will be necessary to control and steer the high-energy laser (HEL) beam, while at the same time making real-time adjustments to account for platform motion, optical train and atmospheric effects on beam propagation, so that the beam maintains high quality, low-loss, precision contact with the Lightcraft from launch all the way up to LEO. While the atmospheric effects on laser beam propagation were briefly discussed in the Lightcraft Nanosatellite Configuration section of Chapter 2, a more in-depth examination of this phenomenon can be found in Reference 32. In what follows, we briefly discuss what a HEL beam control system is designed to do and what innovations were recently developed by the various DoD directed energy weapons programs that are just now being successfully tested and deployed. A beam control system is designed to:t t • Acquire and precisely track a designated target. • Handles the HEL beam emitted from the laser: - Aligns the HEL beam to the optical train's axis - from the laser resonator to the beam director's exit aperture. - Safely relays the HEL beam through the optical train with minimal loss of energy and beam quality. • Expands the HEL beam and focuses it at the range of the target. • Places and maintains the HEL beam on the desired target's aimpoint. • Corrects for beam quality degradations in the optical train or the atmosphere (if needed). HEL weapons usually have high-power optical trains containing more than a dozen mirrors. However, these systems need to be far more compact with minimal high power trains. As directed energy weapon applications begin to employ smaller HEL systems, the size, weight and complexity of the accompanying beam control system has come down as well. The typical HEL beam control system includes: ** 1) a gimbaled beam director, 2) tracking and pointing functions, 3) adaptive optics, 4) acquisition sensors, and 5) target illuminators. Solutions have been recently developed to drive towards a smaller, lighter and simpler beam control system while considering the entire end-to-end system architecture. Existing beam control solutions are robust but large and complex. The technical strides achieved in the past 20 years in wavefront sensing, aperture sharing elements, beam tracking and beam correcting provide new tools to offer a simplified low mirror count beam control system while retaining the ruggedness of function necessary for a laser weapon. Figure 33 and Figure 34 show schematics of a notional inertially-stabilized pointer/tracker mount and beam control system that was developed by NAVSEA's DE&EWS Program. ttD. Kiel, Directed Energy Systems Symposium Short Course, Naval Post-Graduate School, Monterey, CA, 2010. ** D. Kiel, Directed Energy Systems Symposium Short Course, Naval Post-Graduate School, Monterey, CA, 2010 . UNCLASSIFIED'I i'FAA: 061i1Clali.k W&& 8PtLY 63
Not linked to a story yet.
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 77 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.