Award Data

Metallic additive manufacturing (AM) is an attractive technology for the production of lethality test articles due to the potential for significantly reduced lead time and manufacturing cost.However, in order to be effective in providing accurate lethality data, the properties of the AM material have to match closely the properties of conventionally manufactured alloys found in real threat targets ...

The experimental validation of the DoDs weapon systems is at the cornerstone of national security considerations. The structural requirements for the targets utilized impose a severe cost and lead time burden due to the limitations imposed by the traditional manufacturing processes currently used. Novel manufacturing methods for metal alloys have been established in the past years, but they have y ...

Future MDA space missions will utilize small spacecraft with correspondingly small, advanced sensor systems. Cooling of these sensors is required to decrease detector noise and increase detector sensitivity by maintaining the detector at a reduced operating temperature. The cooling system comprises a mechanical cryocooler and its control electronics, both of which are critical technologies to enab ...

This project will develop a statistical-relational framework and enabling technologies for context-aware object classification and selection. The proposed framework is capable of reasoning about the scene as a whole while incorporating the entire corpus of available information including features and classification labels from heterogeneous sensors and properties of other objects in the scene. The ...

Presently the missile defense systems are using a reactive and program-centric framework for assessing industrial base risk. The Phase I effort focused on developing a wide and deep network algorithm using Industrial Product-Support Vendor (IPV) Gen II program for predicting the probability of failure. The proposed Phase II effort leverages the Phase I work and will focus on three main goals:(1) I ...

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) utilizes federated Hardware-in-the-Loop (HWIL) simulations to characterize and predict the performance of the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS).Computer and network resource loading is a key challenge MDA faces in planning and running these simulations. Scenario planners are forced to create lower resolution scenarios, which fall short of BMDS fidelity test o ...

Expanded operating environments, evolving interceptor platforms, and increased performance thresholds have given rise to technical challenges to existing seeker gimbal systems that necessitate evolution of the State-of-the-art (SOTA). LoadPaths approach is to develop flexure-based gimbal concepts that maintain or enhance existing system operating abilities such as field of regard, line of sight (L ...

Standard monopropellants like hydrazine are highly toxic and carcinogenic.These characteristics add significant cost, complexity, and risk during the fueling of spacecraft.Green propellants alleviate most of these concerns.They are far less toxic, ultra-stable, and shock resistant; thereby offering the satellite designer a much safer alternative.MDA17-010 seeks to develop a green-propellant-fueled ...

Additive Manufacturing, more popularly referred to as 3D printing, has most notably been employed to make structural objects in arbitrary 3D forms from materials including polymers, ceramics, metals and even paper. On a parallel path, Printed Electronics, in particular the Aerosol Jet method, has emerged as a production capable technique for printing all variety of electronic elements and even dev ...

Through the proposed MDA SBIR program, NanoSonic will design and empirically optimize radio frequency (RF) transparent polymer derived ceramic matrix composite (CMC) thermal protection system (TPS) materials for missile antenna radomes. The signature characteristics of NanoSonics radome materials will be selectively tuned through the covalent integration of inner multiband frequency selective surf ...