The APS charged the Study Group to pro duce an unclassified report, which would provide the membership of the Society, other scientists and engineers, as well as a wider interested audience, with basic technological information about DEW. It is hoped that this report, detailing the current state of the art and the future potential of DEW for strategic defense purposes, will serve as a technical reference point for better-informed public discussions on issues relating to the Strategic Defense Initiative.
We estimate that all existing candidates for directed energy weapons (DEWs) require two or more orders of magnitude, (powers of 10) improvements in power output and beam quality before they may be seriously considered for application in ballistic missile defense systems. In addition, many supporting technologies such as space power, beam control and delivery, sensing, tracking, and discrimination need similar improvements over current performance levels before DEWs could be considered for ...
