Assessing Aircraft Survivability to High Frequency Transient Threats

Throughout the United States Department of Defense (DoD), the need exists to assess and characterize aircraft system survivability to High Frequency (HF) electromagnetic (EM) transient threats. These threats include the HF Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and other ultra wideband (UWB) transient environments. The Navy recognizes this need and is taking the initiative to investigate the feasibility of a realistic, low-cost test methodology to assess, characterize and validate aircraft survivability to threats that may range from a few hundred Kilohertz to the low Gigahertz region. The proposed Navy technical approach is based on established system-level RDT&E technology using existing high frequency test laboratories and equipment. The approach will be validated using a combination of High Level Pulse (HLP) testing at the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division Patuxent Rivers Horizontally Polarized Dipole (HPD) and Vertically Polarized Dipole (VPD) free-field EMP simulators, electromagnetic effects generating equipment to simulate the carrier shipboard environment free- field low-level continuous wave (LLCW) testing to acquire the stress response data, and wideband direct-drive tests to characterize system strength. The Navy is developing a new wideband (up to 1 GHz) direct-drive technology and waveform combination techniques using stress response data to develop worst-case stress envelopes to be used during the direct-drive tests.