Lightweight, Miniature Sensor Payload for a Mini-UAV

An important area of military capabilities is the small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It is inexpensive and controllable by forward units. The Air Force presently has a significant opportunity to improve the productivity of UAV radar systems to provide all-environment detection of camouflaged and concealed targets as well as detection and tracking of air and ground threats. The long range vision includes: (a) persistent ISR for continuous target tracking, (b) time sensitive targeting for high confidence target identification and a compressed kill chain, and (c) close-in access and sensing. Thus, advanced radar sensor technologies employing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and ground moving target indication (GMTI) are of great interest. Outfitted with advanced sensor payloads, mini-UAVs can be an effective means to deny the enemy sanctuary. This proposal is designed to add significant capabilities to these aircraft by providing a miniature (but fully capable) radio frequency (RF) ISR sensor. The RF sensor expands the conditions under which the platform can be effective, providing all-weather capabilities to include the ability to penetrate rain and other obscurants which degrade the usefulness of existing optical sensors. However, present existing capable RF sensor payloads cannot meet the size and/or weight requirements for mini-UAV operation.