Cambium Launches SentinelOps Platform for Laser Eye Protection and Directed-Energy Defense

Cambium, a Veteran Ventures Capital Fund I portfolio company and developer and manufacturer of advanced materials for defense and high-performance applications, launched SentinelOps™, a dual-use, tunable laser eye protection (LEP) and directed-energy (DE) protection technology platform. The first product to launch from this platform is a line of category-disrupting LEP that provides both robust eye protection and high-fidelity vision.

Laser illumination incidents against commercial, private, transport and military aircraft pilots are a clear and present threat that can with just one second of exposure cause flash blindness, transient eyesight impairment, and in some cases career-ending vision injury. Weaponized laser strikes are also being used against military personnel and civilian personnel at sea and on the ground. For far too long this threat factor in the field has been minimized, largely because luck, not protection, has prevented a catastrophe.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) logs tens of thousands of cockpit laser illumination incidents each year against commercial airlines, air-cargo operators, and general aviation. Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago airports are among the highest-frequency strike corridors in the nation. Existing protection has forced an unacceptable tradeoff: filter the threat, sacrifice visual performance. SentinelOps LEP changes that.

SentinelOps is built on Cambium's integrated materials platform, where material design, process development, qualification, and manufacturing operate as a single system rather than a chain of handoffs. That integration is what allows SentinelOps to selectively attenuate laser threats across the visible and near-infrared spectrum while preserving the color fidelity, contrast, and visual usability operators depend on, at a level not previously achieved in the category. This technology platform spans protective eyewear, optical sensors, aircraft transparencies, windscreens, visors and space-based optical systems.

"SentinelOps is built on a simple premise: laser and directed energy protection shouldn't be limited by form factor. Whether that's eyewear, cockpit windows, or sensor platforms operating from the ground to space, the solution should be equally adaptable," said Kevin Nottage, Cambium Senior Optics Products Manager. "We started with optics because that's where the gap was most visible. Color fidelity and visual acuity had become tradeoffs the industry simply accepted. SentinelOps doesn't accept those tradeoffs. And that same design philosophy scales to any aperture, any platform, any environment."

The Cambium dual-use LEP technology rapidly transitioned from ideation to commercial product through internal R&D and with US government and defense program support, in particular BioMADE (the Bioindustrial Manufacturing and Design Ecosystem), a US Department of Defense ManTech organization operating under the Office of the Secretary of Defense Manufacturing Technology Office. Cambium LEP also benefited from technical collaboration with, and live demo support at, the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD), China Lake.