AbstractCompact, high-field experiments offer the most direct path to study burning plasma behavior. Several designs for these experiments have been proposed. The IGNITOR device has been proposed for construction at Ispra in northern Italy, and the CIT device has been proposed for construction at Princeton, N.J., in the USA. The programmatic role of these experiments is to build significantly on the achievements of JET, TFTR and JT-60, while setting goals that are modest, technically and financially, relative to an experimental test reactor such as ITER.