Counter-Directed Energy Weapons: Defense of Air Assets

Abstract

The global proliferation of directed energy weapon technology presents a new threat for the United States as competitors try to capitalize on the technology's relative high potential of mission success and low operational costs. The use of these weapons necessitates new engineering solutions for naval assets in order to keep pace. It is essential to proactively plan for counter-directed energy weapon methods, tactics, and capabilities. This capstone project characterized the adversarial-directed energy threat environment and developed and evaluated concepts for countering, evading, and neutralizing the potential threat effects against naval assets. In particular, the study focused on high-energy laser weapon systems and their effects on naval unmanned aerial vehicles. Capstone team members developed an evaluation tool that they applied to the concepts. The tool can be adapted to counter and defend a variety of assets. After the team applied systems thinking to this problem, it recommended methods for naval assets to counter these threats.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2020
Accession Number
AD1114135

Entities

People

  • Eranga A. Gonaduwage
  • James A. Jr Ansley
  • Kyle Buffin
  • Lisa Nguyen
  • Stephen A. Hakimipour
  • Victoria E. Couture

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Autonomy
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Cognitive Systems Engineering
  • Control Systems
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Directed Energy Weapons
  • Ground Control Stations
  • High Energy Lasers
  • Laser Beams
  • Lasers
  • Military Science
  • Naval Operations
  • Refractive Index
  • Systems Engineering
  • Tactical High-Energy Lasers
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Unmanned Aerial Systems
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Warning Systems
  • Weapons Effects

Readers

  • Irregular Warfare and Special Operations Cyberspace Operations against Adversarial Threats.
  • Pulsed Power and Plasma Physics.
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - UAVs
  • Directed Energy