The scenario:

The U.S. Navy contracted with Ingalls Shipbuilding to build the world’s most sophisticated, advanced technological stealth destroyer.

The problem:

“Stealth” is defined as very low radar cross section (RCS) and requires clean lines and linear angels, with no protruding objects. Traditional lights mounted on the ship’s superstructure compromise the stealth characteristic by increasing the vessel’s RCS.

The Navy indeed needed external lights—which are required to illuminate the top of the superstructure—but they needed them to be dual function while still meeting low RCS requirements. Their Radar Signature Analysis Team indicated a “cone” shape could work to provide required low RCS, but the major challenge was to incorporate light shaping optics into such a unit while keeping conical shape structure intact.

 The solution:

A longtime collaborator of RSL on shipbuilding projects, Ingalls approached our team to design a state-of-the-art embedded remote source lighting system for this critical destroyer build. We got to work, providing a proof-of-concept build using plexiglass cone enclosures with two reflector cones and two cables entering the unit from the base.  Our final design leveraged this dual-reflector cone concept within the conical enclosure, and further reduced the RCS footprint with features like energy-dissipating metallic coating and specific d