Military fiber laser specialist Nufern wins military contracts for 46 weapons-grade fiber laser amplifiers

EAST GRANBY, Conn., 16 April 2012.Military fiber laser specialist Nufern in East Granby, Conn., has received several contracts on competitively-bid programs to build 46 compact fiber laser amplifiers with power stronger than one kilowatt for several government weapons-grade laser projects, Nufern officials say.

To produce a weapons-grade system, laser output power must be increased without introducing additional optical phase noise and modal instability. Tens of subapertures, each driven with a multi-kilowatt coherently combinable fiber laser amplifier, eventually could enable 100-kilowatt-class laser systems for precision strikes against ground and air targets

This technology will enable the practical use of high-power lasers on a broad spectrum of military platforms without degradation of their original missions. Coherently combinable single-mode fiber-based systems can provide overall laser efficiencies greater than 35 percent, while maintaining near-diffraction-limited beam quality, Nufern officials say.

The Nufern laser amplifiers, to be delivered later this year, are for development and testing of coherent optical phased array and spectrally combined array technologies that enable scalable laser weapons that are 10 times lighter and more compact than existing high-power chemical laser systems, company officials say.

Nufern optical fibers, optical fiber gyroscope coils, fiber lasers and amplifiers. For more information contact Nufern online at www.nufern.com.

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