All purpose FLIR kit for aircraft
AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army
InventorsJohn M. Hall, Richard A. Wright
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
FLIR kits are provided comprising optical and related components which can be commonly used for both navigational and targeting scenarios. Such components include a common detector interface, imaging optics, scanner, interlacer, filter wheel, and thermal reference sources with integrated chopper/rotator assembly, all of which when assembled form a stand-alone imaging sensor when combined with a common associated electronics subassembly. The kits are integrated into standard navigational and targeting platforms of the type found on the AH-64 Apache and RAH-66 Comanche attack helicopters.
Claims20
In an aircraft turret including, a rigid disk-shaped floor plate, a rigid generally cylindrical shroud that covers said floor plate and defines an opening for a thin planar FLIR input window mounted normal to said floor plate with a width parallel to said plate at least twice its height, and a FLIR mounted on said floor plate coupled to control panels in said aircraft by means of one or more wire harnesses;
- wherein said FLIR includes:
- a folded optical axis of a length greater than the largest dimension of said turret and composed of separate sets of contiguous optic axis segments, said sets being defined by a number of replaceable kits, including at least an airkit and an afocal kit, each said kit having a series of optical elements the axes of which define said sets;
- said airkit set including,
- at least a portion of the three final segments of said folded optical axis including all of a middle segment along which are mounted three medium aperture far-infrared refractive lens elements on either side of an intermediate focal plane,
- a scan folding mirror at one end of said middle segment defining an end portion of a segment in a preceding kit normal to said middle segment,
- an interlace folding mirror at the opposite end of said middle segment defining a last segment normal to said middle segment coplanar and oppositely directed to said end portion, whereby said end portion, middle segment and output segment lie in a common airkit plane and said scan mirror is the only airkit element on said end portion;
- only two far-infrared refractive lens elements mounted along said last segment;
- and
- a far-infrared diode detector array behind a flat heat insulated far-infrared window in a cryogenic cooling dewar terminating said last segment.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.