Research Summaries

Back Off-Axis Detection, Geo-Location, Assessment and Mitigation of High Energy Laser Weapon Attack

Fiscal Year 2015
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department Center for Decision, Risk, Controls & Signals Intelligence
Investigator(s) Sritharan, Sivaguru S.
Sponsor Office of Naval Research (Navy)
Summary The goals of this research are (I) to develop software capabilities for the rapid detection of Laser attack by off-axis atmospheric scattering data collected by multiple sensors; and also (II) to explore methods to mitigate the lethality of the attack by the utilization of various obscurants in the propagation path. From intelligence prospective atmospheric scattering can be envisioned as a laser signature and a few Laser sensors have been developed that exploit this capability. The signal will depend on the atmosphere, the collection geometry and Laser parameters such as power, wavelength, and propagation direction. Inverting the scattered signal to recover atmospheric or Laser parameters is theoretically possible but much harder than the typical Lidar problem since neither the atmosphere nor the Laser is under the control of the sensor operator.
(I) As far as detection is concerned the following quantities are of interest: (1) Laser source power; (2) geo-location of the source; (3) orientation of the Laser; (4) wavelength; (5) blowout time; and (6) type of Laser. Likewise the type of scattering available for detection would be (1) direct illumination; (2) off-axis scattering; (3) port scattering; and (4) target splash.
(II) For mitigation research, we will explore the effect of degradation of atmospheric transmission: deep turbulence and thermal blooming; and the use of various obscurants: introduction of plasma in the propagation path, with the particular aim to study beam deterioration and beam split due to this effects.
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Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal