Avionics - April 2010

color-enhanced obstacles. BOSS cues
developed by AFDD consolidated and
improved elements of BSAU symbology
to give pilots essential flight parameters
with reduced workload. The 3D-LZ land-
ings touched down at 0 to 1 knots, with
descent rates less than 50 feet per minute.
Test pilot and AFDD flight projects
office chief Lt Col. Steve Braddom noted,
“They weren’t the typical aggressive land-
ings you see in brownout.”
The demonstration system leveraged
commercial EBAIR (Eye-safe Burns
Active Infra-Red) survey ladar technol-
ogy from H.N. Burns Engineering Corp.,
of Orlando, Fla. The 3D-LZ ladar was
about 30 percent smaller than the com-
mercial version, and when mounted on
the AFDD Black Hawk could gimbal
30 degrees down for landings or from 5
degrees up to 55 degrees down for sling-
load simulations. Compared to MMW
radars, the narrow beam ladar provided
50 times higher resolution with a single
pulse. Small ladar scanning steps, mean-
while, provided 20 times higher resolution
in a full frame of data. Maximum range
of the ladar was 2,000 feet.

The 3D-LZ ladar populated and
updated a dynamic navigation database
for real-time vertical and horizontal situ-
ation displays through approach, landing
and departure. Though ladars in dust
are more prone to signal attenuation and

Brownout initiatives look
to integrate see-through
sensors with synthetic vi-
sion displays. Successful
tests have used millime-
ter wave radar and ladar.

backscatter than radars, the system used a dust preprocessor to keep false returns from cluttering collected navigation data.

AFRL brownout lead researcher Walt
Harrington observed, “We were truly
amazed with the results we got. … The
imagery was not corrupted in any sensible
way by false alarms.”
Depending on size and distance,
the 3D-LZ system selectively enhanced
obstacles with false color on natural color
terrain. Pilots were able to detect obsta-
cles 18 inches high.