Overview of Platforms and Combat Systems

Air and missile defense is a complex process involving the coordinated operation of equipment and computer programs. The most effective defense generally is multiple layers of defense using different technologies in each layer such as long-range hard-kill, followed by hard-kill area defense, followed by both hard-kill and soft-kill (electronic warfare) self-defense. A combat system must merge, fuse, and de-conflict many sources of sensor data to produce a single usable track picture for decision-making. Throughout, sensors are controlled and sensor resource use is managed to meet the overall defense needs. As technical direction agent and technical adviser for many of the combat system elements, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) performs the systems engineering, analysis, and experimentation that helps the Navy select the most combat system capability at an affordable cost.