Review of Environmental Research Specific to Smart Weapons Operability Enhancement for the Battlefield Environment.

Abstract : The Smart Weapons Operability Enhancement (SWOE) Program is developing, validating, and demonstrating an integrated, physics based, scene generation process to consider complex target and background environment interactions for a world wide range of battlefield conditions. The primary product of this program is an integrated process that will enhance the performance of future smart weapons systems for a global variety of battlefield environments. The validated capability combines methodologies and techniques that comprehensively treat environment interactions relevant to smart weapon performance. This capability is being developed and demonstrated for Department of Defense (DoD) wide user communities. The weapon system thrust areas for DoD Science and Technology. Components of the environment have been quantitatively shown to impact the performance of electromagnetic and electro-optical weapon systems. The SWOE program incorporates capabilities from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force technology base programs. This paper summarizes some of the coordinated efforts, by Corps of Engineers (CoE), laboratories in the technology base program. The laboratories are: Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, Waterways Experiment Station and Topographic Engineering Center. The SWOE program has provided a focus for coordinated and cooperative investigations of critical environment factors and processes that significantly impact weapon performance. These studies have considered the broadest possible range of anticipated battlefield environmental conditions. The principal thrust has been to quantitatively define these factors and to provide the capabilities to measure, model, render and extrapolate the environmental impact on weapon performance.