Battle Damage Assessment Telemeter (BDAT) System Impact Test

This report describes the live-fire testing LFT that was performed by the Advanced Munitions Concepts Branch AMCB of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory ARL and the Fuzes Technology Branch WMMNMF at Eglin Air Force Base, FL, in support of the Battle Damage Assessment Telemeter BDAT project. In this testing, three aluminum canisters were instrumented with an ARL p-band telemetry system. Each canister was inserted into the aft end of a penetrator vehicle and launched from a gun into a 1-ft-thick concrete target 500 ft from the gun muzzle. The objective of this testing was to determine if the telemetry system would be able to operate during the high shock of impacting a concrete target. The data acquired from these tests were less than ideal. The amount of noise present in the data was a result of the weak RF link between the telemetry and receiving antennas and the broad-band noise near the transmitter frequency. Since the subcarrier oscillator was detected on all the canisters after impact the telemetry components, other than the antenna that was damaged in each of the three tests, will survive multiple shocks caused by launch and impact.