Vol. 34, No. 3 (2018)
APL Research and Development
Research and development issues highlight APL's diverse contributions to national and global challenges. This issue begins with an article on the Tomahawk flight test program and the Fleet experimentation process. It describes how APL has assisted the Tomahawk Weapon System Program Office with using these capabilities to demonstrate operational use of new Tomahawk technology. The second article describes controlled laboratory test methods as well as test surrogates and devices APL has developed and used to simulate ballistic, blast, and underbody blast battlefield conditions. It offers examples of their use and describes how they contribute to understanding battlefield injury. The next article describes Dragonfly, APL's proposed mission to send a highly instrumented rotorcraft lander to Saturn's exotic moon Titan. NASA selected Dragonfly as one of two finalists for its next New Frontiers mission. The fourth article details the Special Sensor Ultraviolet Spectrographic Imager (SSUSI) program. This program has provided operationally useful information about the state of the upper atmosphere, the ionosphere, and the aurora to operators, forecasters, and scientists since 1990. The issue concludes with two special features: an update on the SEASONS conference, a biennial event that brings together members from the military, government, university, and contractor sectors who have an interest and stake in the space environment, and a summary of APL's Achievement Awards and most recent winners.