A review of the diagnostics used at Sandia National Laboratories to measure the parameters of intense proton and lithium beams generated on the PBFA‐II accelerator will be presented. These diagnostics consist of several types, namely:K&agr; x‐ray pinhole cameras, a multiframedE/dxion pinhole camera, ap‐i‐narray ion pinhole camera, Thomson parabola spectrographs, a Rutherford magnetic spectrograph, plasma visible spectroscopy, and several nuclear activation diagnostics. These components, when taken together, enable a rather thorough description of the 5‐MV, 10‐TW ion beams presently being produced. A unique feature of these diagnostics is that they are capable of operating in hard (several MeV) x‐ray bremsstrahlung backgrounds of some 109–1010rad/s. Details of each diagnostic, its integration, data reduction procedures, and recent PBFA‐II data will be discussed.