The War on Terror has produced new, asymmetric warfare threats ever-more-sophisticated explosive mines on land and at sea. The Navy has moved to incorporate mine counter measures (MCM) into an organic approach where combat units themselves handle counter-mine assets and perform their functions as part of an ongoing military operation. The Navys organic airborne MCM platform, the MH-60S, hosts several airborne MCM systems, two of which are towed mine-hunting and sweeping systems. These systems require that the MH-60S fly low and slow to maintain the search pattern. It is challenging to maintain track and control with the lack of geographic markers and the effect of local winds on the air vehicle path. The provision of multi-direction low airspeed indicators would decrease the pilot workload and improve the performance in continuous, low-speed missions. Ophir proposes to leverage our previous work with airspeed laser radars to develop a small size, weight and power, low cost, and eye-safe system. This sensor is capable of providing range-resolved, profiles of multi-directional airspeed for the full 360 field of regard around the air vehicle in clean 0x9D , undisturbed air, outside of the rotor wash. This airspeed information will be conveyed through simple representation on the pilots control panel.
Benefit: The main benefits of a low airspeed laser radar for the MH-60S are to decrease the number of lives lost due to Naval mine strikes and to lessen pilot workload to enable effective mine countermeasure operations. Naval mine strikes are cited as the root cause of 77% of US Navy ship casualties occurring since 1950, and as operations increase in the littorals of the worlds oceans, so too does the threat from naval mines. A low airspeed sensor will enable a simple improvement to rotorcraft displays, adding predictive information to the flight path marker, which may improve the pilots altitude control, ground track control, and workload ratings. A next-generation, multi-mode lidar sensor for the military and commercial markets may also preclude obstacle avoidance accidents due to controlled flight into terrain and obstacle collision. The low airspeed laser radar also benefits civilian, commercial rotorcraft applications such as helicopter emergency medical flights (HEMS), where low airspeed operations are encountered due to operation away from airports and controlled landing areas.
Keywords: mine countermeasures, mine countermeasures, mine sweep, Laser Radar, MH-60S, pilot display, sweep pattern, Low Airspeed, range-resolved airspeed measurement
