ARETE ASSOCIATES — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A14-041

Description

Smoke and obscurants are used on the battlefield to enhance friendly operations and degrade enemy operations. When coupled with naturally occurring obscurants, such as rain, snow, or fog, limited visibility becomes the normal battlefield operating condition. Enemy surveillance and weapon systems use visual, infrared, laser, and/or radar regions of the spectrum. Smoke and obscurants provide low-cost countermeasures to these systems and they can change the relative combat power of opposing forces by changing the effectiveness of their weapon systems. Modern materials are being engineered to significantly enhance friendly concealment and protect against emerging threats, such as directed energy weapons, laser designators, and rangefinders. Developers require new, more powerful diagnostics instrumentation to characterize obscurants and optimize their effectiveness. A non-invasive measurement technique capable of rapidly mapping the obscurant concentration in four dimensions (3-space, 1-time) is desired. Volumetric imaging lidar is ideally suited candidate for this application. Aret? Associates will leverage extensive investment and experience in dust-penetrating (DUSPEN) imaging lidar technology for helicopter situational awareness in degraded visual environments to develop a volumetric imaging lidar system and associated lidar waveform inversion, cloud diagnostics and visualization algorithms and software tailored for dense aerosol cloud mapping.