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The desire of the US Department of Defense (DoD) to field new directed energy systems for a variety of applications increases daily. This desire stems from recent advances in energy storage and solid-state switch technologies, which enable researchers to make systems more compact and energy dense than ever before. While some systems can draw power from the mobile platform on which they are mounted, other systems need to operate independent of a platform and must be completely self-sufficient. The transient and repetitive operation of these directed energy systems requires that the prime energy source provide high power to intermediate energy storage devices. The ability of electrochemical energy storage devices, such as lithium-ion batteries, to source high power quickly has previously been limited. However, battery manufacturers have recently produced cells that are more power dense then previously available.