After this accomplishment in 2007 I was contacted about an opportunity to manage a small shop in Orlando Florida that specialized in IR Crystal work.  Before my posting at Zygo™ I had worked with crystals in the early 80’s but this was early in the development stages of fabrication processes for theses materials predating the sea change in IR optical military battlefield analysis.  I retained much of what I learned then and was able to bring that knowledge together with the approaches employed at ER Precision Optics as their Optical Shop Manager.  My expertise in process development was highly refined in this role.  I had the responsibility of generating all processes and specifying grinding and polishing approaches that would lead to cost effective production of Germanium, Silicon, Zinc Selenide, Zinc Sulfide, Cleartran™, Sapphire, YAG, and an array of other wavelength specific materials.

I created the process and qualified a detailed acceptance test procedure for Silicon windows for a primary military contractor for the F35 Fighter.   These optics are key components in the F-35 Electro-Optical Distributed Aperture System (EO DAS).    This work involved extensive discussions with lead and subordinate engineers of the buyer and demonstrating the effectiveness of the processes and tests to meet the rigid standards they required.   I ultimately employed my extensive knowledge of Zygo™ Metro Pro ™ Software’s scripting language to create an interferometric data analysis package of 33 separate data sets form ten frames of both sides of the optics.   This allowed ER to use the cost effective GPI XP™ Interferometer operating at .6328 um to provide the customer simulated transmission data for the windows.   This test process addresses one of today’s most costly challenges: testing IR transmission at wavelengths other than those specified by the buyer.  This is significant because the 3.399 um instrument that is required to perform this test requires a six month lead order time and has a base price of $450,000.  By generating data that satisfied the demands of the JSF team with a conventional interferometer ER has gained an edge in military optics components supply at wavelengths other than visible without the expense of the more costly 3.399 um instrument.

The qualifying round for this project lasted about 6 months and ER was ultimately selected from a field of five competitors as one sub-contractor for this project.  The company received a contract for 73 windows in 2011 and under my supervision delivered them on time.  ER is informed that it will act as sole supplier for the next round of windows that is expected to be 170 during 2012.  This contract alone is projected to continue for a minimum of 15 years with overall units delivered numbering in the thousands.

• F-35
  http://www.jsf.mil/f35/
• F-35 Lightning II Electro-optical Targeting System
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fsp1jesXT0
• F-16.net:  F-35 Lightning II News JSF Electro-Optical Targeting Technology on track
  http://www.f-16.net/news_article39.html