Improved Missile Launch Detection Techniques ( IMLD )

The IMLD program addresses the lack of an affordable missile launch detection system. The IMLD will provide the host aircraft with protection against the MANPADS threat by providing missile detection with high probabilities of declaration and a low false alarm rate. The IMLD technology is based on fusing an innovative motion detection algorithm called Passive Moving target Detection (PMTD) with two color sensor detection in the silicon band. PMTD allows the sensor to distinguish the motion of small moving targets (missiles) relative to the background. Using two color sensors allows for enhanced missile plume detection. The focus of this program is to optimize the PMTD algorithm and integrate it with an existing developmental two color silicon detector resulting in a top-level warning system prototype design. The PMTD algorithm has evolved via other research programs resulting in significant advances in reducing the computational complexity of the algorithm The silicon detector uses two sensors with custom optics that are optimized for accurate detection of the launched missile plume. Because the silicon detectors and PMTD algorithm rely on different phenomenology, the expectation is that the correlation between false detections from each mechanism will be very low resulting in a low false alarm rate.