A BAE Systems anti-brownout radar is to be flown on a U.S. Army Sikorsky UH-60 testbed to reduce risk in development of a sensor-fusion-based synthetic-vision system for rotorcraft operations in degraded visual environments.

BAE's Brownout Landing Aid Technology (Blast) system is a lightweight, 94-GHz millimeter-wave radar (MMW) derived from the MBDA Brimstone missile seeker.

The sensor will be used as a surrogate for an advanced MMW radar being developed under the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (Darpa) Multi-Function Radio Frequency (MFRF) program.

Blast will be flown on the UH-60 to stimulate the synthetic-vision avionics backbone being developed by Rockwell Collins under the MFRF program. Honeywell is developing a similar system.

The avionics backbone is designed to fuse data from any available sensors with an onboard digital terrain and obstacle database and generate a three-dimensional synthetic-vision display for the pilots.

The multi-mode MMW radar being developed under MFRF will not be available until 2014, so flights with Blast will enable Rockwell Collins to begin exercising the sensor-fusion algorithms.

Tests with an interim radar could also provide an early off-ramp from the MFRF program, enabling the fielding of a synthetic-vision system with see-through sensor as a brownout landing aid.

Darpa previously flew a Sierra Nevada Corp. 94-GHz radar and Honeywell synthetic-vision display under the Sandblaster anti-brownout program, but decided the device was too heavy for fielding.

The complete Blast system weighs 25-30 lb., says Vernon Fronek, BAE business development manager. This compares with 120 lb. for the Sandblaster prototype, and a projected 60 lb. in production, according to Darpa figures.

Credit: SSGT SUZANNE M. JENKINS, USAF