Multi-Spectral Test
Abstract
Easy to use and readily available, man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) pose an imminent and acute threat to military aircraft and civilian airliners. Our ability to counter such threats is essential to achieve the military objective of owning the airspace in theater and safely operating commercial air traffic within the National Airspace. Therefore, the ability to test Missile Warning Systems, Hostile Fire Indicators, Infrared Countermeasures and advanced sensors is critical to our national defense. Additionally, a new generation of missile seekers is in development and requires a new generation of test technologies for effective assessment. The Multi-Spectral Test (MST) technology area develops technology in three major domains related to testing seekers and sensors: prediction, measurement, and stimulation. Prediction entails the accurate emulation of a sensor or a seeker in a simulation. Measurement deals with all interactions between an object of interest (e.g., a threat) and its immediate environment (e.g., sun glint, moisture in the air, and exhaust). Stimulation involves “painting” a test pattern, an image, or a changing scene on a system under test (SUT). Stimulation can be as simple as testing to see if an SUT responds to a stimulus (e.g., an image) or as complex as simulating battle scene events to measure the response of an SUT in a more relevant scenario. Stimulations and simulations are used at open air ranges (OAR), in installed system test facilities (ISTF), and in hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) test beds. The test and evaluation (T&E) community is required to test advanced seekers and sensors in a repeatable, objective fashion with validated ground-truth data before and after seeker/sensor integration into warfighting systems. Without new technologies, DoD will be unable to perform adequate T&E of multi-spectral and hyperspectral weapon systems of the future. MST is working to address all electro-magnetic bandwidth requirements of concern to the major test ranges and facilities. This includes advancing technologies to test polarization, radio frequency through ultra-violet bands, radar, laser radar (LADAR), and seismic systems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Project
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2012
- Source ID
- 3_0603941D8Z_3_0400_PB_2012
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- Root: Test and Evaluation/Science and Technology
- Child Accomplishment: Multi-Spectral Test