ABSTRACT In a beyond visual range (BVR) air combat, one of the challenges is identifying the best time to launch a missile, which is a decision that must be made quickly. The decision involves combining knowledge about altitude, speed, distance, onboard sensor systems information, aircraft type, and type of missile on the aircraft, as well as intelligence on the opponent’s behavior. This paper discusses an approach to evaluate the probability of shoot-down of an unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) in a BVR air combat, based on a decision support system model that makes use of parameters available from the onboard sensors of the shooter UCAV. The strategic options development and analysis (SODA) method is applied to select the main features available in the on-board sensor systems of the shooter aircraft required to launch a missile successfully. Such features help us to develop an artificial neural network (ANN) for shoot-down prediction. The ANN was trained with a data set with 1093 registered shoots in military exercises, and it shows 78.0% accuracy with the cross-validation procedure.

ABSTRACT: The detection, location, identification and recognition are very important activities for the air forces. Imaging systems are tools used for those functions, so it is mandatory to characterize those systems to really know their actual operational limits. This paper presents a set of measurements for spectral, radiometric and spatial camera characterization to be applied to imaging systems operating in the thermal infrared. A SC5600 camera manufactured by FLIR® Systems was used and assembled with lenses of 27 or 54 mm equivalent focal length. The camera spectral characterization was done by comparison to a calibrated system composed by thermal source, monochromator and a broadband reference detector. The radiometric characterization was performed using an extensive blackbody (CI Systems) for temperatures between 10 and 55 ºC to evaluate the camera accuracy and obtain the calibration curves. The spatial characterization was carried out using the same extensive blackbody and 2 standard USAF 1951 machined targets, one made of steel and other of aluminum, serving as masks for the blackbody. Using recycled material, a homemade extended blackbody for outdoor use was built. The results obtained using the 2 blackbodies in laboratory were similar.