Award Data

In this Phase II SBIR project, Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. (ACT) and Northrop Grumman (NGC) will develop an advanced refrigeration system capable of cooling the Airborne Laser (ABL). The ABL presents some particularly difficult thermal management issues, including precise temperature control, rapid transients and high thermal loading. In the Phase I effort, an innovative compact heat excha ...

This Phase I STTR effort will be focused on fabricating and scientifically characterizing Mo/Re (59 Mo-41 Re), and W-25Re alloys with other alloying additions such as small % of dispersion strengthening materials such as zirconia, hafnia, tungsten carbide, Hafnium (Hf), Zirconium, TaC, Hf-based carbides in select geometrical shapes using UTRON Kinetics''s innovative, and cost-effective Combustion ...

New materials and processes are needed to achieve performance requirements of future ballistic missile defense systems (BMDS). Ever increasing demands on achievable speed and performance require thermally stable, lightweight and mechanically robust thermal protection systems to protect underlying structures from aerothermal heating, radiative heating, as well as impact from rain and other particul ...

Aqwest proposes to investigate an innovative staged magnetocaloric refrigerator (SMCR) for thermal management of spacecraft payload electronics. SMCR offers a high-performance approach for thermal management of laser communication equipment and infrared (IR) sensors, while improving the overall payload energy efficiency and reducing its weight. The proposed project will leverage previous work by ...

In a conventional phased array radar (PAR), analog beamforming networks reduce the entire array into a few combined beams (e.g., sum beam, difference beams) at X-band. Next generation PAR will use a hybrid approach, forming many subarray beams in analog, and then performing a second-stage of beamforming digitally. In analog beamforming systems, only a few DREX modules are needed for the entire rad ...

Foreign missile threat will increase as ballistic missile technology becomes available on an international scale. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) requires high performance, high sensitivity and low noise infrared sensors for space based sensing applications that operate in environments where radiation hardness is essential to mission operation. Radiation hard by design (RHBD) readout integrated circu ...

Characteristics of missile plume UV/Visible emissions & RCS have a great potential to enhance defensive capabilities in several areas related to Ballistic Missile Defense Systems (BMDS). Supporting MDA’s engineering applications related to missile typing, discrimination, tracking, algorithm development, etc. requires estimation of many parameters by the plume models, which can be very expensive ...

The innovation in this proposal relates to the use of a generalized framework for prediction of RCS that utilizes a common procedure for computing the signature from a hardbody and its associated plume. The RCS methodology is based on a first principles approach to the solution of the Maxwell’s equations utilizing a Vector Finite Element Method. The framework can be readily applied to predict ...

Next generation ballistic missile warning, defense and surveillance systems need to anticipate, through modeling and simulation, the background radiation of the battlespace environment, including geometries that intercept the ocean background. This objective requires prior knowledge of the environmental radiance conditions for development of optimal sensors and detection approaches. Much work has ...

The Ballistic Missile Defense System’s (BMDS’s) ability to detect and track enemy missiles against earth terrain backgrounds, including any intervening clouds, requires prior knowledge of the environmental radiance conditions to support the development of optimal sensors and detection approaches. There is a need for an architecture that efficiently and seamlessly unifies terrain and cloud mode ...