Prototype Discrimination Planning Tool Development

Radar discrimination represents one of the most critical functions in the Ballistic Missile Defense engagement process. Radar discrimination relies upon the timely and accurate collection of a set of complex feature measurements. The ability for the sensor to make these measurements as well as the ambiguity of the measurements is highly dependent upon sensor capabilities and sensor / threat geometry. Therefore apriori planning of sensor siting for optimizing the timeline and quality of discrimination feature measurements represents a significant opportunity to maximize discrimination performance. The Phase I effort successfully demonstrated the capability to perform discrimination sensor planning using an innovative approach for rapid waveform / feature level discrimination analysis across extremely large operating areas. These results confirmed the feasibility of near real-time, high fidelity discrimination planning at the feature level. The Phase II effort proposed will evolve this engineering software and produce a prototype discrimination planner as well as an internal core discrimination feature engine which have numerous operational and analytical applications across a multi-billion dollar market.