Embodiments include an optical configuration of a laser for driving an inertial confinement target that may include a section configured to generate long pulse laser light (Primary Laser Source) and then to compress the long pulse with multiple compression stages to a desired pulse length, energy, and beam quality (Compression Section). These configurations can utilize compression stages that do not include any material optics operating near damage fluence, and that do not require material optics exposed to high fluences to couple compression stages to each other.