Stabilized Laser Beam Pointing for Lightweight Laser Designators

Laser designation plays an essential role in today’s high precision combat environment. The stability of a laser designator is currently limited by the ability of the user to hold the laser on the target. Currently, the only tool to assist the soldier to minimize the beam pointing error is to use a relatively heavy tripod. Given the amount of gear ordinarily carried by today’s soldier, it would be highly desirable to develop approaches to aid the soldier in the stabilization of the designator laser without the need to carry additional equipment. Similarly, the successful solution requires a low power approach, since otherwise the soldier is again burdened by the need to carry large amounts of batteries. The challenge associated with the proposed approach lies in the need to develop a miniaturized, highly rugged, reliable and low power laser steering component. To address this challenge, IAI has assembled a strong team of engineers and scientists, as well as highly qualified collaborators. Vectronix Inc. is a world leader in the development of electro-optical target location equipment. New Scale Technologies is an extremely innovative firm which has developed a proprietary line of small size components ideally suited for the proposed application.