A diffraction‐coupled laser array has been actively mode locked in an external cavity to yield Gaussian pulses as short a 61‐ps full width at half‐maximum with a peak power of 1.1 W and an average power of 0.07 W. The array consists of 10 lasers, each 3 &mgr;m wide with 9‐&mgr;m center to center spacing. It emits with a stable double‐lobed far‐field pattern characteristic of the out‐of‐phase coupling between neighboring lasers. These arrays may be useful where high peak as well as high average optical powers are required.