Evaluation of Tactical Decision Aid Programs for Prediction of Field Performance of IR Sensors

The diversity of infrared system performance prediction models currently used by different services conflict with the concept of joint operations' where all services must share the common resources to survive. in this respect this study presents an analysis and a comparison of two operational performance models, the U.S. Army's ACQUIRE and the infrared module of the Navy/ Air Force Tactical Decision Aid (TDA), WinEOTDA. Differences in the modeling of underlying physical principles, input parameters, and treatments are analyzed. A comparison of the predicted detection ranges is made using a data set collected in the Gulf of Oman as the meteorological input. Suggestions are sought for the modification of the codes that will lead to the same outputs. Finally the possibility of adopting one of the codes as a standard IDA is analyzed. For the same scenario inputs and with a user-defined sensor model WinEOTDA predicted longer ranges for 100% of the time. WinEOTDA was observed to be more accurate in predicting detection ranges than ACQUIRE because of the improved target modeling.Naval Postgraduate School Monterey CA is the author of 'Evaluation of Tactical Decision Aid Programs for Prediction of Field Performance of IR Sensors', published 2000 under ISBN 9781423534297 and ISBN 1423534298.