Seeing (Infra)Red

摘要

At the Air Force Electronic War- fare Evaluation Simulator (AFEWES) at Ft. Worth, TX, consistent progress is being made in the laboratory toward better missile warning systems. "What we do is use a hardware-in-the-loop testing system to evaluate countermeasures systems against certain threats in a flight motion-based simulation," explained Lt Col Seth Shepard, commander of AFEWES. "We can simulate the aircraft signature and the signature of the coun-termeasure in some cases directly and in some cases indirectly." For flares the lab uses xenon-arc lamps; for lasers it uses the actual laser hardware. The lab buys what commercial technology fits and adapts it to its needs.