THE DOCUMENTS
DOW-UAP-D137, “AAWSAP DIRD State of the Art and Evolution of High Energy Lasers March 31 2010”, and DOW-UAP-D148, “AAWSAP DIRD Detection and High Resolution Tracking of Vehicles at Hypersonic Velocities November 20 2010”, two Department of War records from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 06, published at war.gov/ufo on 18 September 2026. Both titles are the release’s, taken from the file names. The papers’ own titles, printed on the covers and on p. 2, are State of the Art and Evolution of High-Energy Laser Weapons, whose last word the release title drops, and Detection and High Resolution Tracking of Vehicles at Hypersonic Velocities. Both covers are Defense Intelligence Reference Document covers with the Defense Intelligence Agency seal. The first carries the series line Acquisition Threat Support, 31 March 2010, ICOD: 1 December 2009 and DIA-08-1003-019; the second carries Defense Futures, 20 November 2010, ICOD: 30 August 2010 and a control number printed -08-1012-001, with nothing before the first hyphen. Page 2 names the preparing office, Acquisition Support Division (DWO-3) and Technology Warning Division (DWO-4) respectively, each under the Defense Warning Office, Directorate for Analysis, Defense Intelligence Agency. DOW-UAP-D137 runs to 31 pages, five of front matter and 26 numbered body pages, with 18 figures, one table and no references. DOW-UAP-D148 runs to 46: four of front matter, 32 body pages, an eight-page appendix and 32 unheaded endnotes, with 19 figures and one table. This briefing cites PDF pages. Every page of both is marked UNCLASSIFIED with FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY struck through. The only redactions are two labels on each p. 2, with no black bar and no exemption code: the author’s name replaced by AAP Person 79 and AAP Person 83, printed in large type under Author:, and the programme manager’s by AAP Person 1, in a thin-ruled box. DOW-UAP-D148 p. 1 has no usable issued text.
Why this one is worth your time
These are two of the 37 papers the release files as Defense Intelligence Reference Documents. D137 is a survey of laser weapons whose recommendations are on protecting spacecraft from them. D148 is a review of how to detect and track objects moving at more than about five times the speed of sound, a subject a reader may connect with the release’s own. This briefing reports what each paper’s text says, including what it says about the objects it would track.
What the documents say
D137, what it sets out to do. The Summary says the laser was invented in 1960 and that, on the military side, advances in laser and beam control have come with no deployment of any high-energy weapons, concepts having been discarded or deferred for technical immaturity, expected production cost, lack of apparent utility or logistics (p. 5). It says the most significant technical impediment may have been the large quantities of expensive and hazardous chemicals the only available high-average-power lasers needed, and that electrically powered lasers, solid-state and free-electron, will enable practical military weapons as they mature over the next few decades. It says policy concerns may slow this in the United States, giving as its example the Active Denial crowd control device: DoD, it says, “was precluded from deploying it owing to policy (not legal) concerns”. Other countries, it adds, may not show similar restraint. It calls space the ideal environment for laser propagation and says initial spacecraft laser weapons are conceivable within the next 20 years. The Introduction gives the purpose as an overview of megawatt class high-energy laser weapons, with implications for space vehicles in or beyond earth orbit (p. 6), and opens by setting fiction aside, from “Orson Wells’s Martian invaders in War of the Worlds” to the Star Wars films.
What D137 covers. Figure 1 grades laser and kinetic weapons against four classes of target (p. 7). The paper then takes laser types in turn, chemical, solid-state rod and slab, fibre, ultra-short pulse and free-electron, each with the power levels it reports and its prospects (pp. 8 to 17); beam control and propagation through the atmosphere (pp. 17 to 21); a history of Department of Defense laser weapon research from ARPA studies to the Airborne Laser, which it calls “The sole surviving MDA HEL program”, and a chemical laser test bed in a C-130 (pp. 21 to 24); how laser radiation damages metals, fibreglass, ceramics, the eye and skin (pp. 25 to 27); three classes of spacecraft vulnerability (pp. 27 to 28); and a projection of future capability, closing on Table 1, calculated irradiances for potential space-based laser systems at a set of powers and ranges (pp. 28 to 30). That is weapons-effects material; this briefing describes it and does not reproduce its figures. The paper says of its own materials section that “specific results are usually classified” and that it offers general observations (p. 25).
Where D137 ends. Its seven recommendations are all conditional on a concern about the vulnerability of future spacecraft to laser radiation; each concerns protecting a class of spacecraft component or testing materials for laser damage (pp. 30 to 31). A last page lists places to learn more, among them the Directed Energy Professional Society (p. 31). The paper carries no reference list, no footnote and no citation marker; its only outside pointers are four web addresses on p. 31. Of foreign work it says there have been open literature reports of similar work in Russia, China and other countries (p. 9), and that much slab laser research is occurring outside the United States (p. 12), with no source for either.
D148, what it sets out to do. The paper has no abstract. Its Introduction puts the lower limit of the hypersonic regime at about Mach 5 and sets out four classes of hypersonic object: meteors, which it calls the most common; reentry vehicles returning from orbit; the reentry payloads of ICBMs; and manned and unmanned rockets and aircraft (p. 5). After the X-15 and the SR-71 it lists “Other real and conceptual aircraft”, including “the alleged Aurora SR-91 (Mach 4 to 6)”, the HTV-2, the HyperSoar, “the Russian Leninetz Ayaks” and the Skylon (p. 5). It divides detection methods into electromagnetic, optical, and acoustic and seismic, each relying on the object’s surface or on the hot ionised gas of its bow shock and wake (p. 6).
How the paper proceeds. Chapters 1 and 2 are flow theory: drag, boundary layers, eddies and wakes, shock waves, and the ionisation that makes a hypersonic wake glow (pp. 7 to 14). Chapter 3 takes the nine methods of Figure 7 in turn: RADAR, Doppler RADAR, radio reflection detection, sky cameras, infrared detection, LIDAR, the chronograph, infrasound and seismic sensing (pp. 15 to 31). For each it gives principles, history and named systems (radar installations, imaging satellites, an early-warning satellite programme, surveillance networks) with the ranges, resolutions and bands it attributes to them (pp. 17 to 29, 32, 35). That is sensor performance and detection material; this briefing names its kinds and pages and does not reproduce it. Of the Defense Support Program the paper says “The current operational inventory is classified” (p. 27). Figure 19, read from the page image, compares eight of the methods, and its three target columns are meteors, reentry vehicles and aircraft (p. 36). Appendix A is a MathCad worksheet of one worked case (pp. 37 to 44).
What the paper says has been detected. Its examples include a large meteor passing over several western states, detected by the Defense Support Program in 1972 (p. 27); two large bolides in 2000 and 2001, identified and tracked by infrasound stations (p. 30); an SR-71 over Edwards Air Force Base in 1993 and the reentry of the space shuttle Discovery, STS-42, in 1992, detected by the TERRAscope seismic network in Southern California (p. 31); and what it calls mysterious sonic booms heard over Southern California in 1991 and 1992, which the next sentence traces to two F-4 Phantom aircraft (p. 31).
The next 30 years. Chapter 4 lists five categories of object capable of hypersonic speeds: space debris, reentry craft, meteors, missiles and hypersonic aircraft (p. 32). Under aircraft it names the SR-71’s “rumored replacement, the SR-91 Aurora”, and an agreement of 2000 in which, it says, Russia and the People’s Republic of China undertook to develop the Leninetz AYAKS hypersonic transport (p. 33). Four recommendations follow (pp. 33 to 35). The first, to “Build a Database of the Wake Characteristics for Existing Aircraft”, draws on work by Mark Garnet and Aaron Altman of the University of Dayton (p. 33). The second is to exploit features that let hypersonic aircraft fly efficiently. The third, to “Explore the Detection of Vehicles Designed To Be Undetectable”, includes a drag-reduction concept that a 1999 conference paper, quoted at length, says would hide a missile from RADAR (pp. 34 to 35). The fourth, to “Explore the Development of Novel Detectors”, supposes that some such sensors are “likely part of the existing DARPA/USAF space surveillance system” (p. 35). All four carry detection and countermeasure particulars; this briefing gives their headings and does not reproduce them.
What the documents do not say
Neither paper uses UAP, UFO, unidentified, anomalous, extraterrestrial or alien: each term returns zero in both records (case-insensitive substring search). For D148 that covers the issued layer of pp. 2 to 46 and this project’s OCR of the cover; the page images of its figures, Table 1, Figure 19, the appendix, the cover and p. 2, which the text layer reads poorly or not at all, were read for the same words, and none carries them. D148’s own words for what it tracks are hypersonic (86 hits: 85 in the issued layer, one in the cover OCR), vehicle (67: 66 and one), object (111) and aircraft (93). Its small counts were read in context: unknown appears once, for the predicted signature “of new, unknown aircraft” in the wake database recommendation (p. 34); mysterious once, for the Southern California booms the paper attributes to F-4s in the following sentence (p. 31); phenomen twice, in “Atmospheric phenomenon” interfering with RADAR (p. 18) and in an endnote’s book title (p. 45). The kinds of object it names are meteors and bolides, asteroids, space debris, satellites, reentry vehicles and capsules, missiles, rockets, test projectiles and aircraft, most of them by name; the one whose existence it hedges is the Aurora, “alleged” at p. 5 and “rumored” at p. 33.
D137’s layer returns zero for the same six terms; object appears twice, for “nearby objects or people” (p. 6) and “Man-made objects in space” (p. 27), phenomen once, in a passage on atmospheric absorption (p. 20), and threat once, in the series line on the cover (p. 1). Its figure, photograph and table pages, read on the images, add nothing.
Neither paper prints AAWSAP or DIRD, names a contract or a tasking, or cites another paper in the series. AAWSA appears on p. 2 of each, twice on each page image. The front matter replaces each author’s name with a label (p. 2); this briefing does not go further.
From the record
also been incredible advances in laser and beam control technologies but no
DOW-UAP-D137, p. 5, the first paragraph of the Summary, in the sentence that opens On the military side, there have; the sentence continues: deployment of any high-energy weapons.
applications. There have been many open literature reports of similar work in Russia,
DOW-UAP-D137, p. 9, after the history of the laser’s invention; the line closes the sentence saying the Department of Defense has led the development of high-average-power lasers for weapon applications and opens the next, which continues: China, and other countries.
significant advances but did not result in the fielding of any weapons or major
DOW-UAP-D137, p. 23, the history’s paragraph on the Strategic Defense Initiative, in the sentence that opens These efforts produced; the sentence continues: demonstration systems.
If there are concerns about the potential vulnerability of future spacecraft to laser
DOW-UAP-D137, p. 30, the opening of the Recommendations; the sentence continues: radiation, then the following recommendations are offered:
A fourth class of hypersonic vehicles includes manned and unmanned rockets and aircraft.
DOW-UAP-D148, p. 5, a complete sentence in the Introduction, opening the last of its four classes of hypersonic object after meteors, reentry vehicles from orbit and ICBM payloads
There are a number of different techniques available to detect hypersonic objects and to
DOW-UAP-D148, p. 6, the first sentence on the page, which the page image shows on a yellow highlight; the sentence continues: determine their position, velocity, and trajectory.
from the TERRAscope array, the source of these disturbances was traced to two F-4 Phantom
DOW-UAP-D148, p. 31, the seismic section, in the sentence that opens By using data, directly after the sentence on the sonic booms heard over Southern California in 1991 and 1992; the sentence continues: aircraft flying over Edwards Air Force Base at speeds near Mach 1.
speeds. Over the next 30 years, the ability to reliably and accurately detect them will be
DOW-UAP-D148, p. 32, the opening of Chapter 4; the line closes the sentence introducing five important categories of objects capable of hypersonic speeds and opens the next, which continues: critical.
Where the case connects
The release files both papers under the same AAWSAP prefix as the contract records DOW-UAP-D110 to D116, which Release 06 Briefing 10 covers; neither paper names a contract. The two carry different forms of front matter: D137 has the series line Acquisition Threat Support, DWO-3 as preparing office, FY 2009 in its administrative note and comments routed to ATTN: CLAR/DWO-3; D148 has Defense Futures, DWO-4, FY 2010, a boxed sentence defining the Defense Intelligence Reference Document, and a routing line the page image reads as ATTN: JUIAF - DI/DWO-3 (pp. 1 to 2 of each). Release 06 Briefing 22 describes the first form’s cover, preparing office and fiscal year on DOW-UAP-D128, and Release 06 Briefing 24 covers the release as a whole.
Read it yourself
DOW-UAP-D137, “AAWSAP DIRD State of the Art and Evolution of High Energy Lasers March 31 2010”, and DOW-UAP-D148, “AAWSAP DIRD Detection and High Resolution Tracking of Vehicles at Hypersonic Velocities November 20 2010”, are hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 06. In DOW-UAP-D137 the Summary is page 5 of the PDF and the recommendations pages 30 to 31; in DOW-UAP-D148 the Introduction is pages 5 to 6 and Chapter 4 pages 32 to 36.
Read the files. Decide for yourself.
Related wiki entries
The wiki entries below give background on the programme and publisher behind this briefing, and on the subjects it touches.
References and further reading
- DOW-UAP-D137, “AAWSAP DIRD State of the Art and Evolution of High Energy Lasers March 31 2010”, PURSUE Release 06, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- DOW-UAP-D148, “AAWSAP DIRD Detection and High Resolution Tracking of Vehicles at Hypersonic Velocities November 20 2010”, PURSUE Release 06, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- AARO UAP Records, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, aaro.mil/UAP-Records
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 06 Briefing 10, on the contract file, DOW-UAP-D110 to D116
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 06 Briefing 22, on DOW-UAP-D128, the human tissue paper
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 06 Briefing 24, on the release as a whole