Conclusions and Future Directions

This conclusion provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book focuses on the advances made by a team of university researchers supported by an FY12 Office of the Secretary of Defense MURI grant on Transformational Electromagnetics, managed by AFOSR. This team sought to exploit metamaterials (MTMs), in the broadest definition of the term, as electromagnetic interaction structures in high‐power microwave (HPM) sources, as well as in HPM antennas and components. Whereas the use of conventional media (metals) in vacuum electron device (VED) design is nearly a century old, the use of MTMs is not even a decade old. One can even imagine the design flexibility, combined with the opportunities for lower size, weight, and power (SWAP) that MTM enables, driving new ideas for space‐based electromagnetic systems in both commercial and nation‐state space programs.