Air Force reaches out to industry for ultra-short-pulse fiber laser technology for future laser weapons
KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. – U.S. Air Force laser weapons experts are reaching out to industry for enabling technologies that could lead to ultra-short-pulse fiber lasers for future directed-energy weapons.
Officials of the Air Force Research Laboratory Directed-Energy Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., issued a request for information (RFI-RDKP-2021-0003) on Tuesday for the Ultrashort High Average Power Technology Availability project.
Researchers want to develop and demonstrate new techniques for high-average-power laser radiation for future military applications that today are limited by the available laser technology.
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Air Force researchers want information from industry concerning the maturity, availability, and rough estimate of cost of an ultra-short-pulse fiber laser system for future military applications that produce high average power at a high repetition pule rate.
Researchers interested in a ultra-short pulse laser fiber laser weapon capability for a future acquisition program that will use an ultra-short-pulse laser fiber laser to destroy or disable targets, as well as capitalize on non-linear propagation for high laser intensities at the target.
Proposed solutions should be low size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP), and may use either a monolithic or partly free-space architecture based on single-laser amplifier or beam-combining parallel amplifiers.
Air Force experts want to find out about fiber laser systems that are available or being developed that produce average power of more than 0.5 kilowatts at pulse repetition frequencies of more than 5 kHz, and use pulse widths narrower than 5 picoseconds. Such qualities could lend themselves to radiation bursts and particle beams able to disable or destroy military targets.
Companies interested should upload five-page responses no later than 13 Aug. 2021 to the U.S. Department of Defense Secure Access File Exchange (SAFE) website at https://safe.apps.mil.
More information is online at https://sam.gov/opp/e39914720003417280d7285ec515f3b5/view.
John Keller | Editor-in-Chief
John Keller is the Editor-in-Chief, Military & Aerospace Electronics Magazine--provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronics and optoelectronic technologies in military, space and commercial aviation applications. John has been a member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since 1989 and chief editor since 1995.
