The High Power Microwave (HPM) technology has advanced tremendously in the last five decades. What started out as a mere passive tool in the form of radar for detecting airborne objects during the second world war, has grown to be an active vehicle that can influence and impact its target. Progress has been made in all fronts. The peak radiated power has gone up several orders of magnitude to several gigawatts, the efficiency has grown by a wide margin, and the total energy radiated for pulsed sources has grown to several hundreds of Jules per pulse. Major obstacles still exist. The number of sources that have already achieved one gigawatt or higher is too great to cover here. In what follows, we will briefly describe the sources that have radiated one gigawatt or higher with a pulselength of 300 ns or longer, and an rms efficiency of 10percent or higher. We also address the obstacles lying ahead and suggest possible means of overcoming them. The sources presented are the Relativistic Klystron Oscillator (RPK), the Kagnetically Insulated Line Oscillator (MILO), and the Tapered Magnetically Insulated Line Oscillator (TMILO).
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