Fine Tracking and Aimpoint Maintenance for Phased Array High Energy Lasers

In this effort, the Optical Sciences Company (tOSC) will design and develop a new approach for precisely tracking Army targets through an array of telescopes, using the resulting active return data to perform high precision aimpoint maintenance (APM) on the HEL beam on target. In fact, tOSC has previously demonstrated such a system in theory, simulation, and brassboard hardware, but it was for an entirely different application. However, we can highly leverage results from that and other efforts. We expect that our design will perform with an optimal Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) for tracking, and that a high-resolution image of the target will permit us to perform excellent APM, as discussed in the proposal. The topic call put some particular requirements on the Fine Track System (FTS) Field of View (FOV), APM accuracy, and bandwidth, and tOSC will design a particular system to ensure that we meet those requirements. The resulting design will be capable of operating either with or without subaperture adaptive optics (AO), since the phased array itself constitutes a form of AO, as we will discuss.