NASHUA, N.H.–BAE Systems is able to continually refine and improve its infrared countermeasures products to keep military aircraft protected and survivable in great part by the data coming from its Dr. John R. Kreick Infrared Jamming and Simulation Lab here.
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| BAE Systems’ CIRCM |
The lab is where the company learns all about a foreign air-to-air or air-to-ground infrared (IR) guided missile.
“We learn how they work and how to break them,” said Paul Squires, senior Principle Physicist-Jam Lab, during a media visit.
Right now the lab’s biggest customer is the Army, though it also works with the Navy and occasionally the Air Force, he said.
The point is to continually improve and perhaps reduce the size of current countermeasure systems under development at a nearby Merrimack Worrell/Weeks Aircrew Protection Center. BAE Systems Common Infrared Countermeasures (CIRCM) system is half the size of the Advanced Threat Infrared Countermeasures (ATIRCM) system.
BAE and Northrop Grumman [NOC] are competing on the CIRCM program
For example, back in the late 1960s, the Army developed the Redeye missile system, which was cheap and easy to use, and claimed it couldn’t be defeated, Squires said. The then-company, Sanders Assoc., developed countermeasures for the missile that ultimately led to the cancellation of the program and funding went into the Stinger basic program.
Since that time, Sanders was bought in 1986 by Lockheed Martin [LMT] and then in 2000 by BAE, where it is now part of the Electronic Systems sector.
Squires showed visiting reporters a small sample of the missiles the lab has worked with, from the most widely proliferated missile in the world, the Russian SA-7 to the SA-14, -16,and -18.
The lab only receives part of the missile–the IR sensor, processor and gyroscopes and often no documentation. No warheads or motors go to the lab.
“Physics tends to be on our side,” Squires said. Even without documentation, there are constraints in how a missile could work and how to defeat it.
While new missiles only arrive every year or two or even longer, Squires said first up for that missile is open loop testing and evaluation, to see how it reacts when faced with a heat source, replicating an aircraft.
For scientists, it can be “like a kid at Christmas with a new toy,” Squires said.
They evaluate the health of the missile, for example, to determine if it’s been in a cave for 20 years or in pristine condition in a climate-controlled inventory, he said. Figuring out what’s going on inside the missile, the lab varies inputs to fine tune what they know.
The lab has several clean rooms, optical tables, two-axis rate tables, and assorted IR/ultraviolet (UV) sources.
Once the early evaluations are complete, the missile is plugged into one of six six-degree of freedom hardware in the loop simulators to see how missiles react, how countermeasures work against it and to improve and fine tune the scientific knowledge that will be used in IR countermeasures the company is producing or developing.
For the company and the government, the simulators provide a major cost and time saving over any live-fire testing.
Each simulator can make 5,000-8,000 missile shots during each iteration of a test. That works out to some 30,000 to 50,000 missile shots per day for all six machines. And the simulators do the testing in real time–if it takes a missile six seconds to get to a target, it will take six seconds in the simulator, Squires said.
Right now, Jam Lab is testing 14 different missile systems.
Last stop for the missile’s front end and actuators is a five axis flight motion simulator that “shakes the building” when it’s working, Squires said.