Progress in elimination of pulse shortening in narrowband high-power microwave tubes

The problem of pulse shortening was raised at this conference two years ago, and in the intervening time, efforts to address the problem have been initiated. There is already some significant progress at our laboratory and at some others. This paper reviews the progress and describes the directions of research and industrial efforts underway at this time. The subject is an exciting one in view of the potential applications that would benefit from the extension of pulse length in Gigawatt class microwave tubes. The paper discusses some of the implications of success in this regard.