MZA ASSOCIATES CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF191-057

Description

MZA proposes to develop a conceptual design for a low-SWaP beam control system for general airborne directed energy applications that is optimized for line-of-sight stabilization, precision pointing, and high bandwidth tracking. The proposed design will leverage MZA’s significant prior experience in designing, constructing, and testing high-energy laser (HEL) and adaptive-optic (AO) compatible beam director systems like the Navy’s HEFL Beam Director System (HBDS), which was initially developed for helicopter integration and then successfully adapted to flight testing on the Airborne Aero-Optics Laboratory Transonic (AAOL-T) aircraft. The conceptual designs will then be evaluated using an integrated modeling workflow that incorporates mechanical modeling with MZA’s well-developed suite of HEL modeling and simulation tools, including SHaRE and WaveTrain™. The effects of platform mechanical and aerodynamic disturbance sources will be included in these simulations. The results of these modeling exercises will be analyzed and interpreted in order to produce a set of requirements both for the overall beam control system and for specific components and subsystems that will be used in future phases to ensure that the overall TBC system achieves target performance requirements while minimizing SWaP.