Page 11 - Industrial Technology EXTRA 15th February 2021

within a tight timeframe before the product could
‘go to market’. Recognising its 30+ years pedigree
in optoelectronics, Leonardo turned to Pacer
International and its team of highly skilled engineers
to develop the laser rangefinder, aligning with the
stringent requirements and technical specifications.

The role of the designator
The Type 163 Laser Target Designator was designed
by Leonardo. Its purpose is to meet all of today’s
special and conventional force JTACs (Joint
Terminal Attack Controllers) and JFOs (Joint Force
Operations) mission requirements for marking and
terminally controlling Semi Active Air to Ground
weapons accurately onto the target at ranges of up on to the receiver, it can bloom and saturate. Given
to 10km. The laser is designed to support a the size of the designator, there was only an
modular and separable approach to target extremely limited space to develop the lens. When
acquisition and sensor equipment, providing considering a long-focused lens such as a paparazzi
maximum flexibility in mission planning and more lens, some of these can be two feet long. Pacer only
importantly, helping to minimise individuals’ had a 30mm space to work with.
carrying load.
Laser specialist and project lead, Stuart Sendall Meeting stringent requirements
comments: “Designating up to 10km requires a Being a military product, the designator needed to
significant amount of energy via a huge wall of meet stringent environmental specifications,
photons within a short period of time. We needed particularly in relation to the wide and varied
to be able to consider the huge optical dynamic weather conditions these systems would be
range required whilst managing the atmospheric operating within. They needed to operate optimally
backscatter in the form of particles, sand, dust, and without cracking or falling apart.
water in the air. Equally, we recognised that we As such, there was a rigorous design,
couldn’t design a solution that was too sensitive, verification testing and qualification process that
whereby false returns from atmospheric conditions needed to be completed to verify that the design did
were being distributed. in fact meet the necessary environmental
Fundamentally, we needed to design an requirements. This involved standard thermal
electrical circuit that could manage the effects of shock tests as well as an additional salt spray test.
this wide optical dynamic range and the The qualification tests also included a calibrated
consequences this could have on amplified mixture of sand and dust which was subsequently
saturation and false alarms triggered by thrown in front of a fan to blast the product.
atmospheric backscatter.” “With such small signals, we also had to test the
The lens design also proved challenging. These product for electromagnetic immunity both radiative
designators needed to be able to operate in high and susceptibility. In other words, determine what
ambient light environments and if sunlight reflects it is radiating - it must not have a signature but

February 2021 • INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY EXTRA • p11