Manufacturing Issues for Multimode Seeker Domes

The U.S. Army's Joint Air to Ground Missile (JAGM) and the Air Force Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) are two potential candidates for insertion of multi-mode seeker missiles technology. Surmet has recently demonstrated proof-of-principle multilayer missile domes for these seekers. But technical challenges remain in scaling the processes to manufacturing level. The amount of touch labor, reproducibility of the precursor materials, and repeatability of the processes are huge obstacles to manufacturing capabilities. During the proposed effort, Surmet will develop and demonstrate solutions to improve manufacturability seeker missile domes. Under other SBIR contracts, Surmet is already addressing various technical obstacles in producing the multi-layer domes. Most of these contracts involve individual technical issues such as cost effective forming of dome blanks, producing alternate dielectric materials for the inner layer of the dome, measuring the transmitted wavefront of a full hemispherical dome, deterministic finishing methods for correcting residual wavefront errors in a multi-layer dome, etc. The purpose of the proposed effort is to select a particular approach to producing the multi-layer dome (i.e., bonded shell, alternate dielectric or co-fired ceramic), and to specify an optimized path to producing large numbers of such domes, based on technical and producibility risk and manufacturing cost analysis.