Design Requirements and Mission Planning for Hypersonic Munitions in Weather Environments

CFDRC proposes the development of methodologies and tools for the integration of weather with multiple components of the hypersonic munitions life cycle process. The impact of weather on high speed projectiles is a complex multidisciplinary problem that can only be accurately estimated in operations with the presence of design specification and validation. Under previous contracts, CFDRC developed weather specification and requirement analysis technologies used on the Electromagnetic Rail Gun Program, and currently being integrated into the SM-3 Block IIA/IIB design process. The following proposal presents a holistic approach to weather interaction with high speed munitions systems through the development of analogous methods in design and operations. The successful implementation of these methodologies will be a dual-use application which improves design requirements analysis while simultaneously providing flight risk assessment in adverse weather conditions. Phase I will seek to complete the temporal scope of weather integration with high speed projectiles supporting past (design), present (real-time), and future (mission planning). The Phase I study will also examine the full spatial scope of weather for operations from global, to theater, to campaign coverage. In Phase II, the methodologies will be implemented in a unified software framework for design reliability estimation and mission risk assessment.