There is currently considerable interest from the military and civil authorities in defences against man portable air defence systems. One such approach utilizes directing in-band modulated mid-infrared lasers at missile seekers to disrupt the missile tracking. The work presented here discusses some of the engineering issues associated with the development of such a laser system. The laser system is based on the MURLIN (Multi-band Research Laser INfrared). A prototype system has been developed based on a highly efficient diode laser pumped Nd: YAG co-planar folded slab laser that is frequency converted by cascaded optical parametric oscillators and an optical parametric amplifier. The water-cooled system produces up to 1.4 W of modulated power which is distributed across 3-lines in the 2-5 mm spectral region. The potential countermeasure utility of this system is enhanced by the single beam multi-line output and capability to directly modulate the pump diodes with a range of waveforms. The follow-on air-cooled version currently under development has recently achieved 8 W of modulated average power at the 1.064 mm pump wavelength. Measured beam quality is twice the diffraction limit.
A unique and cost effective measurement facility called the Reusable Aerodynamic Flare Ejection Capability (RAFEC) has been developed at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO), Australia. The RAFEC system involves the use of a reusable, carrier projectile that is launched from a 10 inch, nitrogen driven gas gun. The IRCM flare is loaded in the carrier projectile and the gas gun launches the carrier projectile with a known velocity of between approximately 350 to 650 knots. At a pre-determined time after firing and in the field of view of the measuring instrumentation, the flare is ejected from the carrier projectile for performance measurements to be undertaken. The temporal, spatial and spectral quantities were accomplished with the instruments fielded around the gas gun line of fire and the trajectory is derived from the spatial measurements. The data will be used for hardware in the loop simulations and modelling. Further improvements such as; (1) multiple (maximum of three) flare ejection, (2) 1”x1”x8” format flares made to the carrier projectile, and (3) design and manufacture of the puston, a new item of firing hardware to obtain lower muzzle velocities have enhanced the RAFEC capability. Thus the RAFEC system provides a more realistic IRCM performance measurement capability as it incorporates the deceleration effects experienced by the flare on deployment.
Conference Committee Involvement (9)
Technologies for Optical Countermeasures
26 September 2012 | Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Technologies for Optical Countermeasures
21 September 2011 | Prague, Czech Republic
Technologies for Optical Countermeasures
22 September 2010 | Toulouse, France
Technologies for Optical Countermeasures VI
31 August 2009 | Berlin, Germany
Technologies for Optical Countermeasures V
15 September 2008 | Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
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