SBIR/STTR Award attributes
U.S. Navy airborne platforms have a need to detect, track, and classify threats while performing their missions. As group 1 UAS become more widely proliferated, their threat to interfering with the engines of aircraft become more prevalent. Additionally, traditional anti-aircraft threats, including missiles, remain persistent and must also be protected against; some with and without active propulsion systems. In this proposal, we describe a distributed aperture, 4p hemispherical, multi-spectral threat warning, tracking, and classification system that is designed to detect, track, and identify potential threats to Navy P-8A and MQ-4C aircraft. Specifically, the system is designed utilize multi-spectral infrared imagery (MWIR/LWIR or LWIR/LWIR) to greatly enhance the contrast of targets against the background of the sky or sea / land. This enables detection of objects at standoff distances of at least 10 km, which is required for adequate warning for fast closure rate threats (i.e. 800+ knots – 1 km/sec) in order to take appropriate evasive or counter action. Figure 1 shows summary of the system implementation.
