This 2010 technical survey compares chemical, solid-state, fiber and free-electron lasers and the limits imposed by beam control, atmospheric propagation, power supply and waste heat. It distinguishes laboratory demonstrations from forecasts for deployable systems, with a particular focus on potential spacecraft applications and protection requirements.

The October 10, 2006 Foreign Materiel Program directive assigns DIA executive-agent responsibility and describes acquisition, exploitation, funding, oversight, dissemination, testing, and extraction duties across the Defense Department. This redacted historical edition documents an acknowledged foreign-technology program; it does not identify nonhuman hardware or a UFO recovery operation.