HENSOLDT MILDS - Missile Launch Detection Sensors

The armed forces have recognised the increasing threat to their tactical aircraft from anti-aircraft infrared guided missiles.
A high percentage of the aircraft losses in current and recent conflicts were from ground based defensive systems using IR SAMS. The threat of passive anti-aircraft missiles is evident. They are an undeniable danger to the aircrew and the aircraft.
To cope with this threat, HENSOLDT developed the Missile Launch Detection System AN/AAR-60, known as MILDS. With thousands of sensors sold so far, MILDS has earned a worldwide reputation for reliability and effectiveness.
More information at www.hensoldt.n...

[@ivanivanov-bx2bj]

not bad, good job guys

[@xaina222]

So basically this is an IR camera that can detect hot object approaching the aircraft ?

[@javieralvarez2465]

How do you perform the tracking? The Uv peak detection is during the ignition , thats posible to do a tracking of the MANPAD?

[@HENSOLDT]

Thanks for your comment! A MANPAD engine is burning several seconds and that is sufficient to track and defeat the missile. We hope that is answering your question :)

[@quasi7488]

Very good!

[@HENSOLDT]

Thanks!

[@princesofthepower3690]

How much more effective is a UV MAWS compared to a IR MAWS.

[@Yuttasak.502]

Wow!block2

[@kahlzun]

Why does a missile emit UV radiation? Isn't that a design flaw?

[@daveslow84]

It's physics. The burning of the rocket motor fuel emits light, not just visible but including IR and UV light.

[@nunyabeeswax303]

Everything does

[@eanerickson8915]

How do you see that back end of missile flying at you?

[@HENSOLDT]

Thanks for your interest in our technologies! There are several ways for our sensor to detect the missile:
1) A missile does not only need forward thrust driving it towards the target, but also an upward thrust. Otherwise it would drop down. To get this upward thrust, the tip of the missile points upward just a little bit and our missile warner can glimpse a bit of the plume behind the missile.
2) Behind the nozzle the plume diameter can become wider than the missile diameter. Therefore the plume cannot be obscured completely.
3) And additionally, light from the plume can be reflected on the smoke that the plume leaves behind. MILDS doesn´t see a lot of light, but has been designed to be very sensitive and can detect the little light over long distances.

[@eanerickson8915]

Can the machine say: "You are going to die"

[@larsbuskbjerglarsen2219]

Sonnsch gönnt man ja sich nix

[@emrekoseoglu1680]

The problem with warning systems is not inability of detecting UV radiation, but the opposite. They are detecting too many irrelevant UV radiation sources like any small/large explosion which is almost always present in battlefield. Such sensitivity ends up with tons of false alarms. The algorithm should be able to tell the true danger from false alert, but it requires time to process the data. In many cases, the ground based infrared headed missle is fired in close proximity and will arrive the aircraft in 3-4 seconds, which makes it almost useless to receive the alert comes after huge data processing and it is too late. In ideal case you should scan all sources, and filter real threat by sophisticated algorithm but there is still a bottleneck of processing speed, which then will require bigger units, invading limited space/weight an aircraft body can provide, or becomes too complicated to operate in war conditions.
This is still an unsoved issue, and therefore the most casualities of fighter planes occure due to heat seeking ground based missles, launched by mobile vehicles or individual soldiers in very close proximity. It is easy to detect a long range air to air radar guided missle due to its radar vawes, even if its complicated strike path remains difficult to avoid, the pilots still have time for evasive maneuvers, or flying to friendly air zone and pressing eject button, even if all else fails.

[@HENSOLDT]

Thanks for your message! Your comment may apply to some of the very first UV warning systems that were developed in the early nineties. These systems had only 4 “pixels” and each “pixel” covered a field of view of 90° or more. But our MILDS warners are high resolution imaging systems that can easily distinguish between short explosions and continuously operating missile engines.
By filtering the correct waveband within the UV you can eliminate most of the UV sources immediately which already limits the number of possible sources to be further processed.
In addition, any single event with only a short duration, like small or even large explosions, can easily be sorted out by respective means in the SW at an early stage of processing in order to further limit the number of UV sources and thus the amount of tracks to be finally evaluated to a reasonable number
These tracks can be handled by a processing unit within a reasonable time resulting in a low false alarm rate and quick and reliable alarms.
Thus, the system is able to process the UV images within milliseconds and promptly detect, declare and alarm on an incoming threat with sufficient reaction time for the pilot or Electronic Warfare Suite Controller to respond and initiate appropriate countermeasures like flares or DIRCM.

[@Tattlebot]

@@HENSOLDT so older systems used a PMT or two combined with a quadrant APD?

[@Bmxrkid]

@@HENSOLDTthanks for these answers, I wondered how these systems worked