Directed Energy Detection and Characterization Instrumentation

ABSTRACT: As the Air Force agency responsible for DE weapons and hardening of Air Force munitions against DE effects, the Air Armament Center and 46th Test Wing need a suite of low-cost instrumentation that can provide accurate, high-speed measurements of HEL and HPM energies. This instrumentation is needed to characterize weapons effects and identify kill mechanisms. The scope of the AEgis Technologies Group"s directed energy capabilities and facilities is unrivaled among small businesses. In this Phase 2 project, AEgis will provide HEL instrumentation to characterize the laser beam at various distances, determine the efficiency of tracking and atmospheric compensation systems, and determine the energy deposited on various targets. Microsensors embedded in a rugged detector array will provide spatial and temporal irradiance and temperature profiles on the target. AEgis will also develop HPM instrumentation that will provide test engineers with the ability to characterize L and W band weapon parameters in controlled laboratory environments, determine their performance in open-air environments, and determine the energy deposited at and inside targets and target areas of interest. These HPM instruments will use a reconfigurable design with fractal geometry detectors that are fabricated on conformal substrates using a nanoparticle printing process. BENEFIT: This effort will result in detailed designs and tested devices for both HEL and HPM instrumentation. AEgis has conducted market research over the past few years identifying application areas and customers for both the HEL and HPM sensors to be developed in this effort. The current competitors for our HEL sensors typically only provide off board measurements of temperature on targets using infrared cameras. Our HEL instruments provide higher quality data at higher acquisition rates than this approach and are not subject to degradation caused by thermal blooming or distance from the target. Current technology for HPM sensing consists of B-dot and D-dot sensors that significantly perturb the fields they are attempting to measure and do not fit into confined spaces. Our approach provides a novel detector that has minimal field perturbation. Our commercialization plans involve marketing these sensors to commercial ventures that provide HEL and HPM systems primarily to the military. Numerous prime contractors have expressed interest in using this instrumentation in their internal research and development programs and in conjunction with their development programs for military related DE systems. AEgis has also received expressions of interest from government interests for HEL and HPM instrumentation. We have identified several ongoing programs that have stated requirements for the types of instruments we are proposing to develop with this effort.