<title>Airborne multisensor system</title>

Abstract

The U.S. Army/DOD has a requirement to deploy on short notice to a variety of locations around the globe in order to effectively respond to an ever changing threat and environment. In order to preserve combat capability and ensure mission success, it must be capable of projecting power through global surveillance and communications that can be focused on a specific area of interest. It must also have a surge capability and be responsive to the needs of Field Commanders. A requirement exists for a self-deployable airborne multisensor system that will correlate/fuse data from multiple sources to quickly produce finished intelligence and targeting information that is disseminated to commanders at all echelons. This paper will outline an approach to integrate onboard radar, SIGINT, EO/IR, and SAR sensors with external data sources using a common high performance computer networked to mission configurable operator workstations. Technology developments are underway to repackage supercomputer class machines for airborne embedded processing. Functions that have been traditionally confined to ground processing facilities will soon be performed on the aircraft. The paper describes a current program that leverages recent advances in microelectronic packaging, high density interconnect, thermal management, and power distribution to achieve this goal.