Award Data

"A successful intercept of a high-altitude missile (>100km) by a kinetic energy kill vehicle initiates a complex sequence of events and observable signatures occurring over a very wide range of temporal, spatial, and spectral scales. The resultant debriscloud signatures contain highly desirable information on the lethality of the intercept (glancing blow or deadly impact) and on the contents of t ...

"Mid¿ is proposing a novel and innovative strain-sensor-grid using pseudoelastic shape memory alloys. By embedding a grid of ultra-thin pseudoelastic wires in an epoxy and encapsulating the embedded grid between two layers of Kapton, the embedded sensorcan be used as a layer in a composite, thus forming a multi-functional structure. When one of the Kapton layers is replaced with a flex-circuit ...

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) proposes an experimental and analysis program to determine the relative advantages or limitations of two different high-energy laser waveforms for inflicting lethal damage to metal aerospace targets. Repetitively pulsed (RP)and continuous wave (CW) waveforms will be used to irradiate steel, a typical tactical target material. Metal melting rates will be measured and ...

"Multisensor-multitarget sensor management presents amajor theoretical and practical challenge for ballistic missile detection,tracking, and discrimination. A common approach is to assemble a patchworkof heuristic "bottom up'' techniques---e.g., loosely integrating manydistinct algorithms, each of which addresses some specific part of theproblem (detection, tracking, sensor cueing, allocating and ...

"Emitech, Inc. proposes an innovative approach aimed at the development of carbon nanotube infrared detectors capable of operating at room temperatures in the wavelength range of 1.5-14 mm. This new concept is based on the effect of reduced electron-phononcoupling in quasi one-dimensional carbon nanotubes (CNTs), which considerably suppress the thermal noise and enables higher detector operational ...

"The Department of Defense (DoD) will require cryocoolers for future missions to cool space-based infrared sensor arrays, space-based lasers, and orbital transfer vehicles. Turbo-Brayton cryocoolers are ideal candidates for these missions because they areefficient, lightweight, highly reliable, produce negligible vibration, and have an adaptable layout that allows them to be easily integrated wit ...

"Ballistic missile defense relies upon the deployment of radars that are designed for wideband or multi-band operation to support the following required functions: Accurate target tracking; Object discrimination and classification; Countermeasuresmitigation, and; Nuclear and natural environment mitigation. Additionally, the need to detect and track small targets at long ranges dictates that the r ...

"Optical computation requires very specific optical interconnection schemes such as the in-plane sharp bends and the fast channel switching functions. The integration requirement with existing waveguide technologies further put many limitations on using thecurrent technologies to develop such a device with acceptable performances. This project proposes a new concept of using a new bistable mechan ...

"Stoichiometric Lithium Tantalate crystal (SLT: 50/50) was found to be overwhelmingly superior over its congruent counterpart (CLT: 48.75/51.25) in nonlinear optical, electro-optical (EO), UV transparency, and domain reversion. Third harmonic generation viaperiodically poled structure inside this SLT crystal is expected to be more efficient, and to be more realistic for fabricating novel compact U ...

"There is a need for a cost-effective technology for producing III-nitride substrates for fabrication of high efficiency and high power radar transmit/receive modules, as well as opto-electronic devices. The problems with the current technology offabricating III-nitride based devices on thin films grown on foreign substrates, such as sapphire or SiC, are the plethora of defects associated with th ...