Advanced Seeker Technologies

In order to meet evolving advanced threats, missile defense systems must increase their target discrimination capabilities by using advanced seekers. Increased sensor performance results in improved target discrimination, identification, tracking and map handover, along with operation through countermeasure events and tumbling target tracking. This increase in performance results in an increase in seeker complexity and cost. The objective of the proposed effort is to significantly reduce the cost and complexity of current and next generation THAAD missile electronics by integrating the processing functions and interfaces into one subassembly for incorporation into future block upgrades. Due to the significant investment in software, efforts to reduce cost must not break the fundamental processing architecture and interfaces in the process. The proposed effort develops a seeker assembly design and engineering model hardware of a key seeker processing component that reduces hardware cost, mass and power of the existing THAAD EMD system without requiring a significant investment in porting existing software to it.