On December 5th, 2022, controlled fusion ignition was demonstrated for the first time at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a major achievement in the field of Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) requiring a multi-decadal effort involving broad national and international collaborations. To drive the fusion ignition reaction with the compressed fuel capsule, that yielded 3.15 MJ of nuclear energy, the NIF laser delivered a high-precision pulse shape with 2.05 MJ of ultra-violet (UV) laser energy and a peak power of 440 TW. This laser energy was an increase of ∼8% compared to that delivered on the previous “threshold of ignition” record yield experiment (1.37 MJ of yield for 1.89 MJ of laser energy) on August 8th, 2021. This talk will explain how the results of our extensive research in laser technology and UV optics damage mitigation led to major improvements in the NIF laser, enabling this energy increase along with additional accuracy, precision, and power balance enhancements. Furthermore, on-going efforts that have enabled operations at 2.2 MJ of UV energy will be discussed as well as potential new initiatives to push the laser performance –accuracy and delivered energy– to even higher levels in the future as previously demonstrated on a small subset of NIF beams. Dr. Michael Erickson is the team lead for the Integrated Beamline Performance group within the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). His team is responsible for ensuring laser performance and machine safety on the over four-hundred user experiments performed at NIF each year. He also contributes to modeling and experimental efforts aimed at enhancing the NIF laser capabilities to deliver higher powers and energies on future experiments.