Apparatus for defending against an attacking missile

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 the pulsating reflections of the defence beam (16) at the missile (12). The energy which is emitted towards the attacking missile (12) disturbs the optronic detector function in the homing head (13) by the clock of a pulsed beam (16). Superimposed thereon, in the event of a closer approach, is overloading of the IR-detector by the beam frequency which is in the working band of the homing head (13) and finally thermal destruction of the homing head (13) if the attacking missile (12) has not already previously deflected out of its path of attack due to the failure of its target tracking regulating loop. A continuous-wave illumination beam (40) of lower power and which is spectrally adjacent and which tracks on to a glint somewhat away from the defence beam (16) also serves with its reflection energy for actuation of the topography of an adaptive optical system (42) for compensating for atmospheric propagation disturbances.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.