Expendable Active RF Technology for Helicopters (EARTH)

Countermeasures for hostiles in the aerospace environment are commonly passive devices. As the sophistication of threats grow, there is interest in active countermeasures. An active countermeasure consists of an RF transmitter that may be deployed in the same manner as passive countermeasures using similar equipment. In order to be considered a drop-in replacement, size and weight constraints are placed on these active countermeasures and introduce challenges in development of such devices. The proposed effort will develop a small form factor RF transmitter integrated with a rotor with autorotation capabilities. The vehicle is designed to reach stable descent after deployment without any extra power and minimal number of moving parts. Tests will be conducted to verify stable descent of the vehicle from arbitrary drop orientations and RF transmitter performance at 2-18 GHz.