It has become almost a cliche to preface one's remarks about asymptotic tech niques with the statement that only a very few special problems in diffrac tion theory (be it electromagnetic, acoustic, elastic or other phenomena) are possessed of closed form solutions, but as with many cliches, this is because it is true. One only has to scan the literature to see the large amount of effort (both human and computer) expended to solve diffraction problems involving complicated geometries which do not permit such simplifications as separation of variables, It was a desire for techniques more...