Calibration Leaders And Researchers In The NIST Sources And Detectors Group Support U.S. Military Aviation With Laser-Targeting System Calibrations

“Air Power alone does not guarantee America’s security, but I believe it best exploits the nation’s greatest asset – our technical skill” -Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg

Military aviation allows the United States to unambiguously project power globally, with precision and immediacy. Precision ensures effective delivery of ordinance while minimizing risks to friendly forces and reducing collateral damage. Often, successful weapons targeting requires the rapid adaptability and precision provided by optical guidance rather than pre-programmed coordinates.

Optical guidance systems employ lasers in various ways to successfully engage with an adversary. Regardless of the technical details of each system’s operating modality, they all require high accuracy calibration. For over 50 years, the Sources and Detectors group at NIST has provided laser instrument calibrations and support for DoD weapon systems. This critical support represents 10 % to 20 % of the group’s calibrations workload at any point. Our accompanying research and development work both improves existing standards at NIST for DoD calibrations and is foundational to developing new standards to deploy at metrology facilities operated by our DoD collaborators.

The instruments required to support DoD weapons systems make extensive use of the group’s facilities and expertise. The facility’s capabilities include both pulsed and continuous-beam calibrations. The portfolio of instruments we serve for these weapon systems span power levels from kilowatts to microwatts and require a wide variety of source wavelengths. Every instrument provided by our DoD collaborators requires a unique measurement setup, data handling, and reporting. Our team of engineers and scientists provides the physics-based understanding of optical systems, electronics, programming, and statistics required to perform these measurements. With its team of calibration leaders and researchers, the Sources and detectors group continues to improve its measurement facilities to ensure effectiveness of America’s fighting forces.