NATO STO

On the last three decades, platforms and pyrotechnical flare counter-measures (CM) radiometric and spectroscopic signatures were collected during more than fifteen EMBOW trials. These measurements were mainly used by each participating nation to analyse CM effectiveness against Infrared (IR) guided threats with their own tools to ultimately feed modeling and simulation (M&S) purposes. Nations exchanged on data collection methodologies and techniques but had very limited discussions over the years on the methods and tools they developed to exploit EMBOW data. Given that the M&S community is currently structuring itself to conduct activities at the NATO level, a gap identified by the nations participating in the SET-ET-104 needs to be jointly bridged between the M&S and the signature collection S&T communities to fully comprehend the phenomenology associated to the capture and exploitation of pyrotechnical flares’ signatures. Initially, in an IR Signature specialist meeting conducted under NATO Air Force Armament Group (NAFAG)/Aerospace Capability Group 3 (ACG3)/Sub-Group 2 (SG2)/InfraRed Technical team (IR TT), the participating nations supported the proposition of creating an exploratory team (ET) to address this gap. The ET then drafted an activity proposal based on actual NATO technological gaps, and concluded that a research task group would be beneficial not only for NATO activities, but also at national level for the nations supporting the group.