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Characteristics of a Fe:ZnSe laser are studied at room temperature. The laser active elements are heavily doped single crystals with the Fe 2 + ion concentration n = 0.64 × 10 19 - 5.7 × 10 19 cm - 3 , grown from melt by the Bridgman method. The generated energy of 870 mJ is obtained at the total efficiencies with respect to the absorbed and incident energies η abs = 43 % and η inc ≈ 35 % , respectively. The laser slope efficiency with respect to the absorbed energy is η slope ≈ 50 % . In a heavily doped active element with the Fe 2 + concentration n = 5.7 × 10 19 cm - 3 , in which the medium excitation depth is just a part of the total element dimension along the optical axis (the element is completely non-transparent for the pumping radiation), the radiation spectrum of the Fe:ZnSe laser shifts to the long-wavelength range by more than 300 nm as compared to spectra of the laser on crystals excited along the whole element length. It is shown that Fe:ZnSe lasers on heavily doped single-crystal elements can be efficiently excited by a radiation of a Cr:ZnSe laser without tuning the spectrum of the latter to the longer wavelength range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]