Apparatus for defending against an attacking missile

US5600434A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• Diehl GmbH & Co. · DE

Inventors

• Berndt Warm · Arnstorf, DE
• Detlev Wittmer · Maulbronn, DE
• Matthias Noll · Weiterstadt, DE

Key dates

• Filing date: Jan 30, 1995
• Grant date: Feb 4, 1997
• Expiry date: Jan 30, 2015

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G01S7/495
• WIPO field: Other special machines
• WIPO sector: Mechanical engineering

Abstract

Craft (11) generally and in particular the transport aircraft (11) which are used for humanitarian purposes and for supplying crisis reaction forces over militarily unknown territory and which have comparatively little manoeuverability are particularly endangered by partisans who operate out of cover with modern portable guided missiles (12), against whose homing heads (13) the flares which were previously discharged from aircraft (11) no longer afford an effective defence. Therefore those and other potentially endangered craft (11) are provided with easily interchangeably and autarchically equipped containers (17) from which the defence beam (16) of a laser source (21) in accordance with pre-guidance by a warning sensor (10), are directed by way of the tracking optical system (19) of a target tracking system (20) on to the approaching guided missile (12) whose homing head (13) is already locked on to heat sources such as for example the engines of the craft (11) to be protected. For quickly and reliably detecting the guided missile (12) which is initially only in the form of a point, against the clutter background, the tracking camera is so-to-speak scanned stroboscopically on to …