Miniature Sensor for Aircrew Laser Warning

There is a considerable threat from laser weapons designed to blind and dazzle tacticalaircrews. To protect the aircrew against such a threat, a light weight wide angle earlywarning laser sensor, that can detect both cw and pulsed lasers, as well as the directionof arrival would be a significant advantage in queuing a protection system. PacificAdvanced Technology (PAT) has three innovative approaches to solving this laser warningproblem. These will be evaluated during Phase I, all use a single aperture for multi waveband coverage. One uses a speckle-gram coupled with optical signal processing, anotheruses diffractive optics and the third uses fiber Bragg gratings. Any can be packagedinto a small lightwieght and low power sensor package. Our analysis has shown that thespeckle-gram approach, for example, has the sensitivity to detect laser threats with asignal power density at the aperature of 10 microwatts.During the Phase I portion of this program, in coordination with the Air Force, eachtechnology will be investigated in depth and the most approriate of the three will bedeveloped into a protoype system during Phase II.A laser warning system has applications in the Dod and the commercial marketplace forlaw enforcement, as well as, laser safety applications. It is anticipated that aPhase III program to productize this hardware for commercical sale will follow thePhase II work.