High Energy Laser Pointing through Extended Turbulence

The airborne laser (ABL) uses adaptive optics to compensate the atmospheric turbulence between the ABL and the target. The primary purpose of this compensation is to increase the energy density of the energy laser at the target. However, the specifics of the engagement scenario require the tracking point of reference and the adaptive optics point of reference to be located at different points on the target. This research considers the effects of tracking a target in one direction while compensating for atmospheric turbulence in a different directions. The target references used are a point source and a rectangle, while a point source alone is used for the adaptive optics reference. It will be shown that compensating for atmospheric turbulence in a different direction than tracking results in a bias in the mean tracking error while having no appreciable effect on track jitter