A steerable laser transmitter uses a two-stage architecture for beam steering. A LCWG is used to provide continuous fine steering and a PG stack is used to provide discrete coarse steering. An optical amplifier is inserted between the LCWG and the PG stack to provide gain and increase transmitter power, hence range. The LCWG is configured to limit its steering range to the acceptance angle of the optical amplifier, at most ±2°×±2°. The result is a high-power laser transmitter that can be rapidly and precisely steered over a large FOR.
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