Efficient Signature Ensemble Generation for Non-Nominal Countermeasures

Discrimination between the threat, countermeasures and debris within a realistic target complex is perhaps the most challenging aspect of missile defense in the midcourse and terminal phase, and the considerable variations in shape and dynamics anticipated for countermeasures and debris are an especially vexing aspect of the problem. Development of robust, necessarily complex discrimination algorithms demands a high-fidelity EO/RF signature generation capability which we propose to develop, based on the results of our Phase 1 effort. In particular, we propose to advance the state-of-the art in three important aspects of signature generation for these objects: spanning the space of off-nominal shapes, predicting their surface temperatures and modeling the dynamics during deployment. The signature package will produce representative signature ensembles, consistent with the fundamentally probabilistic nature of the shape, size and dynamics of off-nominal countermeasures and debris. It will produce fully correlated Vis-IR and RF signatures, to support a very broad range of potential applications including data fusion. We believe the commercial market for this technology includes the space-launch community, for whom the detection and characterization of off-nominal objects and general debris is a matter of growing concern. PRA intends to apply our experience gained in establishing a record of success in migrating significant technical advances into commercial products to the commercialization of the product of the proposed effort.