Radome Materials & Process for Long Flight Duration-High Speed Missiles

Conventional ceramic radomes materials have reached their performance and life limitations, predominantly due to more severe flight environments and targeting requirements for advanced missile systems, and the resultant increase in radomes materialsproperty requirements. This problem has become exacerbated with the phase out of Pyroceram as a commercially available radome material, since alternate ceramics with similar performance capabilities are much more expensive and exhibit performancelimitations. Alternate ceramics such as silicon nitride and IRBAS have been considered many times for radome applications; however, the combinations of high dielectric constant, high thermal conductivity, high machining costs, low production yields, andpoor rain erosion in half wave configurations have driven the need to continue development of alternate radomes material candidates.This proposal presents a unique opportunity to develop low cost innovative manufacturing processes with the specific goal of applying technology previously developed under SMDC Contract DASG60-98-C-0027, under which Mentis Sciences, Inc. (MSI) developedand evaluated composite radome materials for RF, specifically Ka band applications. The ultimate intent of this effort is to evaluate these materials for X to W-band applications for future high performance missile platforms and offer the community a lowcost alternative for these systems. Phase I results are expected to show that the proposed composite radomes can be used both as a replacement for Pyroceram and for advanced systems, with both lower cost and higher performance. Prior technology developments by the research team lead tothese expectations.