Award Data

The United States faces the risk of losing a technology vital to national security. Coatings of Titanium Carbide (TiC) applied by a novel Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) Process are applied to the balls used in ball bearings in several important strategic and tactical missile defense systems. A Swiss company was the sole source of these coatings and their production capability has now been phase ...

For the Phase I effort, Busek developed a simple, integrated colloid thruster prototype capable of producing thrust of 100 µN at reasonable operating conditions. A unique geometry was chosen from several electrospraying sources tested. This thrust was conservatively estimated from measured beam current, accelerating voltage and could be significantly higher. As this was achieved from an area o ...

Missile defense takes place in an unpredictable, real-time environment and thus requires an adaptive approach to optimization that dynamically allocates sensors and their supporting resources in response to changing goals and constraints. Here, we propose a system for Sensor Network Optimization using Multi-Agent Negotiation (SNOMAN) to meet the challenge of this real-time resource allocation prob ...

Energid Technologies will create a model-based 3D threat-object identification system. The approach uses 3D models of the threat-object families to automatically construct identification algorithms for ladar and intensity sensor data. Single, dual, and multichannel imagery is supported. The system will identify an unknown object as one of up to 150 family types using three spatial stages: segm ...

Thermal batteries are mission-critical components utilized in virtually every weapon system. Thermal batteries require four types of pellets that comprise the energy-producing portion of the battery. These include: (1) anode pellets, composed of Li(Si) alloy and electrolyte salt, (2) cathode pellets, consisting of either FeS2 or CoS2 and electrolyte salt, (3) separator pellets, consisting of MgO ...

High-Altitude Airships (HAAs) are becoming increasingly important for a variety of defense and non-defense oriented missions, including applications for homeland security, missile defense initiatives, surveillance, remote sensing, radar and telecommunications. Providing adequate power for the airship and payloads is a primary concern for long-duration HAAs. Regenerative fuel cell (RFC) systems are ...

The results of Phase I showed that a 900 W/mK mechanically stable and CTE matched heat sink for T/RIMM module could be upgraded to 1200 W/mK. Phase II work is aimed at 1) establishing the manufacturing and producibility bases for design and deployment of advanced radar and RF components; 2) demonstrating the technology by fabricating at least two candidate pin cooled 8 channel T/RIMM base plate ...

This STTR Phase II proposal relates to the development of a Multi-Band IR Scene Projection Display for Scene Simulation in Hardware-In-the-Loop facilities. The focus is to transition Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) displays to the infrared regime and to develop multi-band projection optics. This projection display enables MDA/AF a much enhanced scene simulation capability for missile intercepti ...

The objective of this program is to characterize the upper atmosphere electrical environment so that the effects of this environment on high altitude airships (HAA) and other platforms intending to operate in this environment can be determined, and protection methods developed. This includes transient luminous events (TLEs), such as red sprites and blue jets and their associated electrical propert ...

MEMS accelerometers typically use force/torque rebalance applied by subcomponent actuators which, although well-understood, are seriously limited in performance by fundamental material and electronics stability issues, and some subcomponent design issues. These deficiencies can be overcome by the introduction of "gyro-rebalance", which substitutes inertial force balancing (the use of gyro torque t ...