Award Data

This proposal will develop methods to determine the weapons type associated with Ballistic Missile Defense engagements. This development will use impact and debris track observations from active RF and passive EO/IR sensors. The goal is to increase efficacy and accuracy for which individual objects within the debris field can be tracked and characterized, when sensor fusion is employed. This info ...

Very long wavelength infrared (VLWIR) detectors are highly needed for midcourse phase missile defense. Blocked impurity band detectors are capable of sensing at these wavelengths but require extremely low temperatures, in the 10K or less range. The InAs/GaSb Type II heterostructure system offers unique design flexibility for new innovative detectors. By incorporating dark current reduction techniq ...

Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) maintenance costs are high, making up as much as 60-70% of the total system life-cycle cost. Moreover, inefficient maintenance policies and procedures can have adverse national security ramifications. We propose a Global visibility and Central Command approach to meet the maintenance and inventory management challenges. The proposed system consists of thre ...

The MDA's request to detect, track and discriminate long range targets requires infrared focal plane arrays (IRFPAs) that have higher sensitivities, longer cutoff wavelengths (>14 µm), larger formats (> 256 x 256), and higher operating temperatures than the current infrared technology. PbSnTe is an ideal material for the MDA's requirements. Its carrier mobilities and quantum efficiencies are comp ...

Lead in household paint and dust is a serious health hazard, as low-level lead exposure can result in a number of adverse health effects, especially in children. Onsite and real-time detection and quantification of lead in paint/dust are very important to homeowners and certified lead-based paint removal professionals. Toward this end, both field-portable equipment (such as X-ray fluorescenc ...

Driven partly by a succession of catastrophic accidents, the U.S. armed services began insensitive munitions (IM) technology development some time ago. However, most of these efforts to date, including new packaging technologies, have focused on tactical applications such as bombs, small missiles, and tank ammunition, and have effectively left the large solid-fueled rocket IM state-of-the-art dan ...

As the BMDS evolves over the next decade, the community will be exposed to a substantially greater amount of data from successful intercepts in all phases of the tiered defense, including boost, mid-course and terminal. In order to perform the necessary battle management, command and control functions a net of sensors using both active RF sensors supporting the fire control, guidance and navigati ...

In this SBIR Phase I effort, Structured Materials Industries, Inc., www.structuredmaterials.com (SMI), in collaboration with two primary radar system suppliers, will develop affordable, low-power density phased array radars. Our proposed technical approach will combine two emerging (yet well proven) technologies; a tunable radar reflector array or "reflectarray" design, and tunable impedance devi ...

The objective of the proposed effort is to develop and deliver a real-time physics-based simulation capability for predicting threat plume signatures from launch to burnout. SciTec's approach is to address the dominant phenomenology in each altitude regime (e.g. data derived mixing of free stream air to enable complete combustion in the fully afterburning regime) and develop fast plume signature ...

The goal of this SBIR project is the development of a fiber-coupled diagnostic system for the comprehensive Tx/Rx-mode calibration and performance-monitoring of large-scale phased antenna arrays. In the proposed calibration system, innovative electro-optic (EO) field sensors will monitor near-field amplitude and phase emanating from the array under observation during Tx-mode calibration, while com ...