High Performance Assault Zone Marking System

Special Operations Forces is looking for assault zone marking systems to facilitate instrument approaches of fixed and rotary wing aircraft under extremely low ceiling/visibility conditions (200' ceiling/0.5 mile visibility). After successfully finishingthe phase-I project, in this phase-II effort, we will concentrate on the whole assault zone marking/lighting system design, calculation/simulation, prototyping, measurement, lab/field test, modification, retest, and give a complete specification for futuremanufacturing and field deploying of the system. Following innovative research will be deeply addressed: 1. Two lighting systems-ground lighting system (GLS) and air lighting system (ALS) will be designed, manufactured and tested. The GLS will usevisible/invisible parabolic/high intensity LED or eye-safe LD with single or double-filament (VIS & INV) to make the active ground marks. The ALS will use above LED/LD to make a common-aperture, variable-focus projector equipped on the Aircraft toilluminate the passive ground marks having LIF, retroreflective paint, tape, or corner cube. Since this kind active/passive lighting/marking system has lightweight, long lifetime and low power consumption, one soldier can deploy and remove the whole systemin a short time. 2. Uncooled LLL CCD, NIR and LIR cameras, wireless communication systems, polarisation filters will be designed, manufactured and tested for the detection of above lighting/marking systems to accurately facilitate the instrument approachunder bad weather condition for safe landing. Benefits: The proposed lighting and detecting systems will be useful for lighting, security, IFF, advertisement, surveillance, law enforcement, and non-lethal illumination for crowd control. Boating,automotive, aircraft, and fire fighting industries would utilize high performance and high efficiency situational awareness systems for operating in poor visibility conditions.