Research Summaries

Back Directed Energy Effectiveness in Various Atmospheric Conditions

Fiscal Year 2017
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Physics
Investigator(s) Blau, Joseph A.
Sponsor Program Executive Office, Integrated Warfare Systems (Navy)
Summary Understanding how Directed Energy (DE) weapon performance is affected by atmospheric conditions can guide the Navy in developing tactics against various threats. Our physics-based approach uses both existing and custom codes and considers linear effects such as turbulence, absorption, scattering, humidity, haze, aerosols, precipitation, fog, as well as non-linear effects such as thermal blooming. Our laser performance code, ANCHOR, based on well-known scaling laws, runs many orders of magnitude faster than full propagation codes, and produces results in good agreement with those codes.
One goal of this research will be to extend the work that we have done in this area to consider propagation of lasers at different wavelengths and power levels, for applications such as dazzling sensors, and to estimate the effects on various targets as a function of the irradiance that arrives at the target.
A further goal of this research is to continue educating naval officers at NPS about directed energy weapons and their effects. At least two of our students will be doing thesis research related to this project.
Keywords Directed Energy High Energy Laser (HEL)
Publications 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
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