FORWARD PHOTONICS LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: A16-080

Description

The Army has been putting significant effort into the fielding of Direct Energy Weapons (DEWs) including the High Energy Laser Mobile Test Truck (HELMTT) and the Mobile Expeditionary High Energy Laser (MEHEL). These weapon systems are based on diode pumped fiber lasers with powers up to and exceeding 100 kW. Despite the satisfactory performance and the good beam quality of these lasers, the efficiency and Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) of these systems is not sufficient for the diverse array of platforms these lasers can be applied to. Forward Photonics' technology of Wavelength Beam Combination (WBC) of diode lasers offers a revolutionary solution to this challenge by incoherent beam combination of a large number of high power high brightness diode laser bars. In the Phase II base program Forward Photonics is building a proof of concept ~ 8 kW direct diode laser module, which is a building block for the full 50 kW laser system. This proposed Sequential Phase II program will allow Forward Photonics to de-risk the external combiner elements of the program by building up several additional laser modules and allowing for the construction and alignment of the combiner.