Ladar-Based Closed-Loop Fire Control System for Small-Diameter Weapons

Aerius Photonics and our program partners propose to develop a closed-loop fire control system for small-diameter weapons that incorporates a flash ladar sensor into an existing ballistic-computing rifle sight sensor suite. The ladar sensor will use a burst of single ranging laser pulses to image the field of view and collect 3-D snapshots of the scene similar to a conventional camera and flash, hence the name FLASH ladar. The sensor-based ballistic computing rifle sight will provide an aimpoint for the initial shot based purely on ballistics calculations. The ladar system will then detect the trajectory of a fired projectile in order to calculate the miss distance and update the aimpoint for increased accuracy on subsequent shots. Aerius’ program team includes companies experienced with Ladar systems and ballistic-computing algorithms and fielded military weapon sights.