Novel Effector Payloads

In a multi-tiered defensive architecture, new types weapons will be developed, and there is a need to be able to assess the system level effects of these non-traditional approaches against treat systems.  One such approach has been derived from hypersonic vehicles traversing natural weather.  Impacting weather at hypersonic velocities can cause significant damage.  This program develops a system level tool to assess damage mechanisms of “cloud” based warheads.  Cloud based systems are low-cost as there isn’t a need for hit-to-kill accuracy, they are terminal phase so large costly boosters aren’t required, and moderate persistence so that more than one threat system would be engaged per round.  This class of system however needs a physics-based M&S tool that can accurately translate localized damage to the system performance level.  This program will develop an M&S tool that will capture damage from multiple impactors and predict the aerodynamic, aerothermal, structural, and guidance effect against hypersonic systems.  The final product will utilize an artificial intelligence algorithm to enable the design of these innovative warheads to satisfy system level requirements and estimations of kill probability.