Award Data

Diode-Pumped Alkali Lasers (DPALs) have great potential for high-energy lasers. Proper design of these systems is challenging because many interrelated processes impact their performance, and critical kinetic rate coefficients are not well known. In response, our team is developing a comprehensive physics-based analysis/design tool, and experimentally determining key kinetic rate coefficients. The ...

Superconducting radio-frequency receivers, optical absorption energy sensors, and quantum computers have the potential to revolutionize digital communications for manned aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, (UAVs) and satellites. Development of low size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) cryocooler technology is essential since these communication systems must operate at cryogenic temperatures. Turb ...

Modern aviation platforms and systems must be able to provide sustained operations in a wide variety of environments. These systems must be able to operate for extended periods in severe weather and marine environments, undergo large temperature extremes (desert to arctic conditions) and dust environments, and are subject to high vibration and shock environments. The systems are often required to ...

FreEnt Technologies, Inc., A2Z Innovations, Inc., and the University of Alabama Aerospace Research Center (UAH/ARC) have teamed together to design, develop, and perform ground-based-demonstrations of a High-Speed Simultaneous Multiple Object Detection (HS-SMOD) System for MDA. The HS­SMOD system uses a simple but innovative technique of a passive fiber-optic grid and high-speed COTS opto-electr ...

Navy aircraft components require constant repair due to damage from field operations. In most cases, the damage is due to maintenance occurrences or service, due to Foreign Object Debris (FOD). Although the damage appears to be minor, the components need to be sent back to a Navy depot for disposition and repair, which is usually comprised of blending away the damage and substantially reducing the ...

Measuring and characterizing the post-intercept states of a missile intercept event is critical for determination of interceptor effectiveness. System sensors including radar imaging infrared (IR), ultraviolet (UV), and visible wavelength sensors have been used to characterize these events. FreEnt has developed an innovative approach to post-intercept assessment based on mathematical formalisms su ...

SWIR polarimetry has potential applications for target detection, discrimination, and tracking for land and maritime environments. In recent years, researchers have applied imaging polarimetry to applications including detection of disturbed earth, detection of objects and swimmers in water, and target detection with background clutter. The application space for imaging polarimetry is increasing t ...

The strategic planning and creation of test scenarios for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) All Digital System Level Simulations and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HWIL) test events is a time-consuming challenge. As proven in Phase I, requirements-based scenario design will significantly benefit from rigor in the specification and control of common data sets. In addition, capturing the knowledge of subject ...

Aircraft carrier control systems rely upon many sensors and signal processors to ensure safe and efficient aircraft launch and recovery. As one example subsystem, Digital End Speed Indicators (DESI) use reluctance sensors mounted within the catapult trough to determine aircraft end speed during launch. The DESI was developed in the 1980s, and recent reliability problems have highlighted the need f ...

Hemorrhage remains a largely unsolved problem and a leading cause of preventable deaths in both civilian and military arenas. Component blood therapy constituting of equal ratios of pRBCs, fresh frozen plasma and platelets have been shown to decrease mortality in hemorrhage patients. Platelet units are currently unavailable at forward operating military treatment facilities due to their short shel ...