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This paper will present the progress on AMRDEC's development of a cold background, flight motion simulator (FMS) mountable, emitter array based projector for use in hardware-in-the-loop systems simulation. The goal for this development is the ability to simulate realistic low temperature backgrounds for windowed/domed seekers operating in tactical and exo-atmospheric simulations. The projector has been developed to operate at -10 degrees Celsius in order to reduce the apparent background temperature presented to the sensor under test. The projector system includes a low temperature operated Honeywell BRITE II emitter array, refractive optical system with zoom optics, integrated steerable point source and high-frequency jitter mirror contained within an FMS-mountable environmental chamber. This system provides a full-FOV cold background, two-dimensional dynamic IR scene projection, a high dynamic range independently steerable point source and combined optical path high frequency jitter control. The projector is designed to be compatible with operation on a 5 axis electric motor driven Carco flight motion simulator.

The U.S. Army's Research, Development, and Engineering Command's (RDECOM) Aviation and Missile Research, Development, and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) provides Hardware-in-the-Loop (HWIL) test support to numerous tactical and theatre missile programs. Critical to the successful execution of these tests is the state-of-the-art technologies employed in the visible and infrared scene projector systems. This paper describes the results of characterization tests performed on new mid-wave infrared (MWIR) quantum well laser diodes recently provided to AMRDEC by the Naval Research Labs and Sarnoff Industries. These lasers provide a +10X improvement in MWIR output power over the previous technology of lead-salt laser diodes. Performance data on output power, linearity, and solid-angle coverage are presented. A discussion of the laser packages is also provided.