 A series of tubes with lenses on either end would focus the light down to a point (the focal point) where it would pass through a pinhole which would reject stray unfocused light, smoothing the beam and eliminating the high intensity spots which would have otherwise been further amplified causing damage to down-beam optics.The technique was so successful on Argus it was often referred to as being "the savior of laser ICF".After the success of Cyclops in beam smoothing, the next step was to further increase the energy and power in the resulting beams.