Laser designator

A laser designator is a laser light source which is used to designate a target. Laser designators provide targeting for laser-guided bombs, missiles, or precision artillery munitions, such as the Paveway series of bombs, AGM-114 Hellfire, or the M712 Copperhead round, respectively.

Portable unit directing bombing in Afghanistan, 2001
CILAS DHY 307
A Thales Damocles target designation pod combined with a NAVFLIR imager

When a target is marked by a designator, the beam is invisible and does not shine continuously. Instead, a series of coded pulses of laser light are fired. These signals bounce off the target into the sky, where they are detected by the seeker on the laser-guided munition, which steers itself towards the centre of the reflected signal. Unless the people being targeted possess laser detection equipment or can hear aircraft overhead, it is extremely difficult for them to determine if they are being marked. Laser designators work best in clear atmospheric conditions. Cloud cover, rain or smoke can make reliable designation of targets difficult or impossible unless a simulation is accessible through available ground data.

Deployment

Laser designators may be mounted on aircraft, ground vehicles, naval vessels, or handheld.

Airborne

The U.S. Air Force selected the Lockheed Martin's Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod (ATP) in 2004. It equipped multiple USAF platforms such as the F-16, F-15E, B-1, B-52, and A-10C. It also operates on multiple international fighter platforms. The U.S. Navy currently employ LITENING and ATFLIR targeting pods on a variety of strike aircraft.[1] The Litening II is widely used by many other of the world's air forces. The United Kingdom's Royal Air Force use the Litening III system and the French use the Damocles and ATLIS II.

Ground-based
USAF handheld laser beam as seen under night vision, 2007

U.S. Air Force Joint Terminal Air Controllers and Marine Corps Forward Air Controllers typically employ a lightweight device, such as the AN/PED-1 Lightweight Laser Designator Rangefinder (LLDR), permitting them to designate targets for Close Air Support aircraft flying overhead and in close proximity to friendly forces.[2] Northrop Grumman's LLDR, using an eye-safe laser wavelength, recognizes targets, finds the range to a target, and fixes target locations for laser-guided, GPS-guided, and conventional munitions. This lightweight, interoperable system uniquely provides range finding and targeting information to other digital battlefield systems[3] allowing the system to provide targeting information for non-guided munitions, or when laser designation is unreliable due to battlefield conditions. Pakistan Army uses home made laser designator LDR-4.[4]

gollark: Configuring it isn't very annoying, the language makes decent sense and all, but I have about 10 subdomains and tons of random subpaths with special routing and reverse proxying logic.
gollark: I have about 300 lines of nginx config by now.
gollark: Oh, hmm, 20 according to my out of date list, oh dear.
gollark: I run about 15 random bits of somewhat important software at this point and don't actually have an up to date list.
gollark: For a bit I tried doing a thing where my server config was stored in git and I could just run scripts to recreate it on a new install, but this was too annoying and by now I've accumulated so many arbitrary ad-hoc fixes.

See also

References
  1. "Fact Sheet - LITENING II". 24 June 2003. Archived from the original on 24 June 2003.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
  2. "AN/PED-1 Lightweight Laser Designator Rangefinder (LLDR)".
  3. http://www.irconnect.com/noc/press/pages/news_releases.html?d=187249
  4. "LDR". gids.com.pk.

Further reading
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.