Report to The American Physical Society of the study group on science and technology of directed energy weapons

Abstract

The HF/DF cw chemical lasers have been stated to yield power levels exceeding 1 MW with acceptable beam quality. Based on these data, we estimate that even the least demanding strategic defense applications require power levels to be increased further by at least a factor of twenty while retaining beam quality. However, the laser geometry which achieved the above demonstration will have scaling problems to higher power levels; thus, the combination of power scaling and adequate beam quality must be explored for some different chemical laser design, yet to be demonstrated;