Night Vision For Pilots

Night Vision For Pilots

April 26, 2011: For over half a century, the U.S. Department of Defense has been seeking a better night vision system for their pilots, particularly those flying helicopters and low-flying fixed wing aircraft. Decade by decade, the devices have gotten better, but they all had some limitations which, in turn, restricted what pilots could do while flying at night. Now a U.S. firm is demonstrating their HRNVS (High Resolution Night Vision System), which will eliminate the "looking through a straw" problem and provide a much enhanced image. This is one step closer to the perfect night vision system.  It's been a long journey.

It was six years ago that the U.S. Air Force has received the first of a new generation of night vision goggles. The ANVG (Advanced Night Vision Goggles) had a 95 degree field of view, compared to 40 degrees for the old ones. The 40 degree field of view was described as looking through a straw and required the user to look around a lot. This got old real fast, caused fatigue, and was responsible for some accidents. The first ANVGs were given to the crew of AC-130 gunships and the MC-130 transports used by SOCOM (Special Operations Command). Both of these aircraft frequently operate at night. A-10 pilots received them next, along with crews on SOCOM helicopters. The initial order was for about 400. The ANVGs cost about $10,000 each and run for twenty hours on two AA batteries.

Five years ago, another improvement was introduced. This worked by projecting what night vision devices (attached to the pilots helmet) saw, right onto the head up display items already being projected onto the helmet visor used by pilots. But when U.S. Marine pilots began using their Top Owl helmet visors in this way, some of them encountered hyperstereopsis (an exaggerated depth perception view). This was not safe for pilots flying close to the ground, so marines went back to using the older night vision goggles. These, despite the "looking through straws" problem,  at least avoided any depth perception problems. The Top Owl manufacturer (Thales) developed training methods to overcome the effects of hyperstereopsis when flying under 60 meters altitude, and the marines eventually resumed using Top Owl.

If HRNVS survives testing and initial use by combat pilots, this will represent another major step forward in night vision gear for pilots
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Chinese Carrier Defenses Installed

Chinese Carrier Defenses Installed

April 18, 2011: The new Chinese aircraft carrier, the Shi Lang (formerly Varyag) has had its first weapons installed. These were easily identified as FL-3000N anti-missile systems. These are similar to the American RAM anti-missile missile system, except that they come in a 24 missile launcher and are less accurate. FL-3000N was only introduced three years ago, and uses smaller missiles than RAM. The two meter long FL-3000N missiles have a max range of nine kilometers (about half that for very fast incoming missiles). The 120mm, two meter long missiles now use a similar guidance system to RAM, but are not as agile in flight.

Over the last decade, the U.S. Navy Phalanx 20mm autocannon anti-missile system has been more frequently replaced by SeaRAM. What's interesting about this is that SeaRAM is basically the Phalanx system, with the 20mm gun replaced with a box of eleven RAM (RIM-116 "Rolling Air Frame") missiles. The Phalanx was developed in the 1970s, and entered service in 1977. RAM was developed in the 1980s, and didn't enter service until 1993. RAM has a longer range (7.5 kilometers) than the Phalanx (two kilometers) and was originally designed to be aimed using the ship's fire control systems. Phalanx, on the other hand, has its own radar and fire control system and, once turned on, will automatically fire at any incoming missiles. This was necessary, as some anti-ship missiles travel at over a 500 meters a second. With SeaRAM, you've got a little more time, and can knock down the incoming missile farther from the ship. This is important, because it was feared that a large, very fast anti-ship missile (which the Russians prefer, and sell to foreigners), even when shot up by Phalanx, might still end up having parts of it slam into the target ship. Since SeaRAM has eleven missiles ready to fire, it can also engage several targets at once, something the Phalanx could not do.

The RAM missiles are 127mm in diameter, three meters (9.3 feet) long and weigh 73.6 kg (162 pounds) each. The terminal guidance system is heat seeking. Basically, it uses the rocket motor and warhead from the Sidewinder air-to-air missile, and the guidance system from the Stinger shoulder fired anti-aircraft missile. SeaRAM missiles cost about $450,000 each, which is probably at least 50 percent more than the FL-3000N missiles. SeaRAM is meant to provide protection for combat support ships that normally have no defenses, or at least no combat radars and fire control system. The new LCS will use the SeaRAM as well.

The Shi Lang/Varyag is one of the Kuznetsov class carriers that Russia began building in the 1980s. Originally the Kuznetsovs were to be 90,000 ton, nuclear powered ships, similar to American carriers (complete with steam catapults). Instead, because of the high cost, and the complexity of modern (American style) carriers, the Russians were forced to scale back their plans, and ended up with 65,000 ton (full load) ships that lacked steam catapults, and used a ski jump type flight deck instead. Nuclear power was dropped, but the Kuznetsov class was still a formidable design. The 323 meter (thousand foot) long ship normally carries a dozen navalized Su-27s (called Su-33s), 14 Ka-27PL anti-submarine helicopters, two electronic warfare helicopters and two search and rescue helicopters. But the ship was meant to regularly carry 36 Su-33s and sixteen helicopters. The ship carries 2,500 tons of aviation fuel, allowing it to generate 500-1,000 aircraft and helicopter sorties. Crew size is 2,500 (or 3,000 with a full aircraft load.) Only two ships of this class exist; the original Kuznetsov, which is in Russian service, and the Varyag. Like most modern carriers, the only weapons carried are anti-missile systems like Phalanx and FL-3000N, plus some heavy machine-guns (which are often kept inside the ship, and mounted outside only when needed.)
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Laser Measures Protein Interactions

From weblog: Photonics.com:News and Features

Laser Measures Protein Interactions - A laser technique that can measure interactions between proteins tangled in a cell's membrane is expected to help in the discovery of new drugs.
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The New Chinese Missile Looks Very Familiar

The New Chinese Missile Looks Very Familiar

April 10, 2011: China recently introduced, for the export market, the M20 ballistic missile. This is a system where two of these 3-4 ton missiles are carried on a large truck transporter/launcher. What is worrisome to Russia is that the M20 looks very similar to the Russian Iskander (9K720) system. Increasingly, Russia has accused China of stealing a great deal of Russian military technology, and warned of repercussions if China tried to sell these copies to the export market. China has had plenty of time to steal Iskander's secrets. So far, China has not revealed details of the M20s operation sufficiently to make detailed comparisons with Iskander. But if the M20 contains too many of the Iskander special features, there could be, if not war, then litigation.

Iskander began development near the end of the Cold War. The first successful launch took place in 1996. The 3.8 ton Iskander has a solid fuel rocket motor and a range of 280-400 kilometers, with a 400 kg/880 pound warhead. The missile can be stored for up to ten years. Russia sells several different types of warheads, including cluster munitions, thermobaric (fuel-air explosive) and electro-magnetic pulse (anti-radar, and destructive to electronics in general.) There is also a nuclear warhead, which is not exported. Guidance is very accurate, using GPS, plus infrared homing for terminal guidance. The warhead will land within 10 meters/31 feet of the aim point. Iskanders are carried in a 20 ton 8x8 truck, which also provides a launch platform. There is also a reload truck that carries two missiles.

Russia developed the solid fuel Iskander to replace its Cold War era SS-23 battlefield ballistic missiles (which in turn had replaced SCUD). The SS-23 had to be withdrawn from service and destroyed by 1991, because the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty prohibited missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,300 kilometers. When post Cold War financial problems slowed down development of Iskander, this left Russia dependent on the shorter range (120 kilometers) SS-21 system, along with some aging SCUDS, for battlefield ballistic missile support. Russia used some of these older missiles against Chechen rebels in the 1990s, along with a few Iskanders. The Iskanders were more effective. But the Iskanders cost more than a million dollars each, which is several times more than what SCUDs go for.

Russia has had little success finding export customers for Iskander. Russia has not been able to buy many of these missiles itself, even though they entered service five years ago. Some were used against Georgia in 2008. Also that year, Russia threatened to send some to Kaliningrad, as a way to threaten the new NATO anti-missile system being built in Poland (to protect Europe from Iranian missiles). A year later, Russia decided to not send the missile to Kaliningrad, because the U.S. had decided against setting up the anti-missile system in East Europe.

Initially, Syria, Kuwait, South Korea, India, Iran, Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates expressed some interest in Iskander. The export version, Iskander-E, would have a shorter range (280, instead of 400 kilometers) and fewer countermeasures for the warhead. But so far only Iran has expressed willingness to buy, but this is unlikely because of international sanctions against sending offensive weapons to Iran. In any event, Russia took Iskander off the export market three years ago because the Russian Army was suddenly buying, and that had priority over export orders. Thus far, about 30 launcher vehicles and 75 missiles have been built. Each 8x8, 40 ton launcher vehicle carries two missiles and a crew of three.

Russia originally planned to build at least five brigades of Iskander (60 launchers, each with two missiles, plus reloads, which could amount to over a 150 missiles). Iskander was just entering commercial production three years ago, and only three brigades are believed in service. One was deployed near St Petersburg, much to the consternation of nearby Estonia.

Russian missile production capabilities have sharply deteriorated since the end of the Cold War in 1991. This is one reason why the current Russian government is making so much noise about this imaginary NATO plot to surround and subdue Russia. Losing the Cold War did not go down well in Russia. Rather than forget and move on, many Russians prefer to remember, and use the imagined evil intentions of their Cold War foes to explain away defects in the Russian character.

This threatened Russian deployment to Kaliningrad was all about a unique feature of Iskander, which is that it is not a traditional ballistic missile. That is, it does not fire straight up, leave the atmosphere, then come back down, following a ballistic trajectory. Instead, Iskander stays in the atmosphere and follows a rather flat trajectory. It is capable of evasive maneuvers and deploying decoys. This makes it more difficult for anti-missile systems to take it down. Russia is buying a special version (Iskanders-M) for its own military. This version has a longer range (400 kilometers) and more countermeasures (to interception). Russia will not provide details. Russia has admitted that it could use Iskander to destroy the U.S. anti-missile systems in a pre-emptive attack. Just in case Russia wanted to start World War III for some reason or another. This threatened Iskander deployment was mainly a publicity stunt, unless you want to seriously consider the possibility that the Russians are trying to start a nuclear war.

Kaliningrad was the perfect place for Russia to start World War III. The city is the former German city of Konisgberg, which was captured at the end of World War II, and kept by Russia, as the boundaries of Eastern Europe were rearranged in the late 1940s. Until 1991, Kaliningrad was on the Soviet Union's western border. But when the Soviet Union dissolved that year, and more than half the Soviet Union split away to regain their independence as 14 new nations, Kaliningrad found itself nestled between Poland and the newly reestablished Lithuania. The small (200 square kilometers, 400,000 Russians, the Germans were expelled 60 years ago) city is still the headquarters of the Russian Baltic fleet and protected by a large force of troops and warplanes. The Iskander missiles would feel right at home
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Russia is replacing its Cold War era Grad MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket Systems) with the new Tornado G family of weapons

MLRSski

April 7, 2011: Russia is replacing its Cold War era Grad MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket Systems) with the new Tornado G family of weapons. The original, 1960s, Grad system was a truck mounted launcher holding 40 122mm, with a range of 20 kilometers. Later models got the range up to 40 kilometers. There were also some Grad systems with larger caliber rockets. All the Grads were unguided. These were replacements for the World War II models. Russia invented modern MLRS in the late 1930s.

The main Tornado G weapon is a truck mounted launcher with twelve 300mm rockets, each with a range of 90 kilometers and with satellite navigation (GPS and whatever else the buyer specifies). With Torpedo-G, the Russians are playing catch-up with the U.S. Army, which is into its second generation of MLRS. The original American MLRS entered service two decades after Grad, and was an unguided 227mm rocket, with two, six round, canisters mounted on a tracked vehicle. These had a range of 42 kilometers. MLRS used lots of electronics and automation, as does the new Tornado G.

The next generation, introduced in 2005, was truck mounted HIMARS rocket launchers. The army has a total of 375 HIMARs vehicles in service or on order. It was because of the success of the GPS version of the U.S. MLRS rocket, that the smaller, truck mounted MLRS (HIMARS) rocket launcher system became the most popular vehicle for launching the rocket. HIMARS carries only one, six MLRS rocket, container (instead of two in the original MLRS vehicle), but the 12 ton truck can fit into a C-130 transport (unlike the 22 ton tracked MLRS) and is much cheaper to operate. The first HIMARS entered service in 2005, about a year after GPS guided rockets did.

The 309 kg (680 pound) GMLRS (guided multiple launch rocket system) missile is a GPS guided 227mm rocket that entered service seven years ago. It was designed to have a range of 70 kilometers and the ability to land within meters of its intended target, at any range. This is possible because it uses GPS (plus a back up, less accurate, inertial guidance system) to find its target. Two years ago, the army tested GMLRS at max range (about 85 kilometers) and found that it worked fine. This enables one HIMARS vehicle to provide support over a frontage of 170 kilometers, or, in places like Afghanistan, where the fighting can be anywhere, an area of over 20,000 square kilometers. This is a huge footprint for a single weapon (an individual HIMARS vehicle), and fundamentally changed the way you deploy artillery in combat. Russia and China have followed suit and converted many of their unguided rockets systems to ones that use GPS guided versions.

The U.S. Army is getting most of the 900 HIMARS vehicles planned, with the marines getting the rest. There are also several export customers. The U.S. Army is buying 100,000 GMLRS rockets, most of them fitted with a 89 kg (196 pound) high explosive warhead. These have been used with great success in Iraq and Afghanistan, where over a thousand have been fired so far. The guided rocket is much more effective than the older, unguided, version, and is replacing it in most cases. No more of the unguided rockets are being purchased by the U.S. The accuracy of GMLRS means that one or two rockets does the job that previously required a dozen or more of the unguided ones. That's why HIMARS is so popular. While it only carries six rockets, that's often enough to last for days, even when there's a lot of combat. HIMARS can be reloaded, with another container of six GPS guided rockets, in less than ten minutes
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APS Stops An ATGM In Gaza

APS Stops An ATGM In Gaza

March 30, 2011: For the second time in a month an Israeli Merkava tank used its APS (Active Protection System) to defeat an incoming missile. The first incident, three weeks ago, involved an RPG warhead (an unguided rocket propelled grenade fired from a metal tube balanced on the shoulder). But this time it was an ATGM (Anti-Tank Guided Missile), possibly a modern Russian system like the Kornet E. This is a laser guided missile with a range of 5,000 meters. The launcher has a thermal sight for use at night or in fog. The missile's warhead can penetrate enough modern tank armor to render the side armor of the Israeli Merkava tank vulnerable. The missile weighs 8.2 kg (18 pounds) and the launcher 19 kg (42 pounds). The system was introduced in 1994 and has been sold to Syria (who apparently passed them on to Hezbollah and Hamas).

All this came a year after first equipping Merkava tanks with APS. The earlier incident occurred automatically, and the crew didn't realize the RPG warhead had been stopped until after it was over. That, however, is how APS is supposed to work.

This first combat use is a big deal, because APS has been around for nearly three decades, but demand, and sales, have been slow. The main purpose of APS is to stop ATGMs, but on less heavily armored vehicles, stopping RPG type warheads is important as well. The Israeli Trophy APS uses better, more reliable, and more expensive technology than the original Russian Drozd (or its successors, like Arena) APS. For about $300,000 per system, Trophy will protect a vehicle from ATGMs (Anti-Tank Guided Missiles) as well as RPGs (which are much more common in combat zones.) Israel is the first Western nation to have a lot of their tanks shot up by modern ATGMs, and apparently fears the situation will only get worse.

Israel first encountered ATGMs, on a large scale, in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. But these were the clumsy, first generation missiles that turned out to be more smoke than fire. More recent ATGM designs have proved more reliable and effective, but no nation, except Israel, has yet made a major commitment to APS. That may now change, simply because one RPG and one ATGM have been downed.

Most APS consist of a radar to detect incoming missiles, and small rockets to rush out and disable the incoming threat. A complete system weighs about a ton. Russia pioneered the development of these anti-missile systems. The first one, the Drozd, entered active service in 1983, mainly for defense against American ATGMs. These the Russians feared a great deal, as American troops had a lot of them, and the Russians knew these missiles (like TOW) worked. Russia went on to improve their anti-missile systems, but was never able to export many of them. This was largely because these systems were expensive (over $100,000 per vehicle), no one trusted Russian hi-tech that much, and new tanks, like the American M-1, were seen as a bigger threat than ATGMs
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DARPA’s Urban Photonic Sandtable Display enables 3D battlefield planning without goofy glasses

You probably point and laugh at your friends when they have big, bulky 3D glasses perched on their noses in theaters. That kind of tomfoolery just won’t do amongst the military brass, who frown at the slightest hint of snickering in the operations room. This new 3D system, called the Urban Photonic Sandtable Display (UPSD), should help. It’s a DARPA project, a fully holographic table (no glasses required) that can be scaled up to six feet diagonally and allows visual depth of up to 12-inches. The technology comes courtesy of Zebra Imaging , which earlier wowed us with some insane 3D printouts , and the data will come from LIDAR systems like this ROAMS bot

Planning In 3-D And At Light Speed

Planning In 3-D And At Light Speed

April 2, 2011: The U.S. Department of Defense has developed a holographic 3-D map display system  called UPSD (Urban Phototonic Sandtable Display). This system does not require special glasses, and replaces the current 3-D system which is presented on large flat screen displays in 2-D. This new 3-D tech is yet another aspect of an ongoing revolution in how combat headquarters are equipped, organized and operate.

These innovations began over a decade ago, but took its current form seven years ago when the 1st Cavalry division went to Iraq with fifty special PC systems, each equipped with three flat screen displays and wired so that the fifty PCs can communicate with each other over an encrypted network powerful enough to handle VOIP (telephone calls via the Internet). The use of three displays enables each user to view what they are working on now, a battle map and a screen full of information from another member of the network. Half of these PC "work stations" went to the division headquarters. The other 25 went to eight brigade level command posts (combat brigades and support commands) in the area the division is operating in (the Baghdad vicinity.)

Local networks like this are popular in corporations, enabling people who work together a lot, but are dispersed in many different locations, to constantly stay in touch. The software they use has come to be called "groupware" and has special features that makes it easier to share data and collaborate on projects. The army "groupware" project (officially, "The Command Post of the Future") had been in limbo for several years, as no one wanted to pay to have it installed in their combat division for a real life workout. But in 2004 there was a war on, and the commander of the 1st Cavalry division heard about it, saw a demo and liked it enough to take it on. One thing the 1st Cav officers quickly realized was that with this groupware setup, they could eliminate a lot of face-to-face meetings, and the need to travel through dangerous areas of Baghdad to get to the meetings.

But there was a more fundamental reason for going with "The Command Post of the Future". The current generation of senior officers (Colonel and above) grew up with PCs, and had access to the Internet in college, before the Internet went commercial and evolved into a mass media as the World Wide Web. These officers understand what you can do with networked PCs, and have been using laptops in the field for years. "Groupware" and other "collaborative software" is all the rage right now both inside and outside the armed forces. Actually, the Internet is basically groupware, but the idea for groupware was around before the World Wide Web (which is little more than using the Internet via a browser) came along in the early 1990s. Most senior officers accept the fact that the future of warfare is going to be with networked command and control systems.

Back then, "The Command Post of the Future" was not that much of a jump from then current systems. A century ago, officers were getting used to running a battle using telephone and radio while looking at a map. Before that, you ran a battle by standing on a hill (for a better view, often while on horseback) and issuing orders to aides, who dashed off to deliver your instructions. By World War II, the radios were everywhere and the concept of running things via a "network", while looking at a map, in a bunker or a jeep, was established.

Now it's going up to the next level, with the power of computers, and lots of data handling software, plugged into the network. This is an important difference. While the commander of an army or a division could look at a map and discuss the situation with subordinates over the radio, to actually move an army or division, not to mention sending it into combat, involved a lot more planning and detail work than most people realize. With over 15,000 people, over 5,000 vehicles, over 30,000 electronic devices (radios, night vision goggles, GPS receivers, PCs) and thousands of tons of supplies (mostly fuel and ammunition), a combat division (usually consisting of at least half a dozen brigades) requires that a lot of decisions be made and calculations performed before anything happens. Computers, however, now make the decisions and calculations much easier.

It wasn't always this way. Combat divisions first got computers in the 1970s. These were not mobile and were used for stuff like payroll and general records keeping. The army keeps lots of records. Personal Computers started sneaking in during the 1980s, as troops used their own PCs to make life easier for themselves on the job. By the late 1980s, combat divisions had PCs officially, and during the 1990s, PCs replaced typewriters and a lot of filing cabinets. "The Command Post of the Future" worked because the divisions already have most of their records on PCs, and a few dozen officers and NCOs sitting in front of networked PCs could do the work of hundreds of staff troops to gather, organize and analyze the information needed to make a division move or put it into combat. The three displays of the "The Command Post of the Future" led to the use of a 3-D battlefield display for officers to plan future operations, and control current ones.

UPSD is also a vital tool for the air force in mission planning (working out the moves warplanes will make when going into enemy territory.) The army picked up this air force mission planning technique, and have successfully used the computer aided version of this for small unit operations (convoys, patrols and raids)
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No Heat Vision For F-15Cs

No Heat Vision For F-15Cs

April 3, 2011: As an economy move, and because of unspecified "technical problems", the U.S. Air Force is dropping all efforts to equip any of its F-15C fighters with IRST (InfraRed, Search and Track) pods. This includes an effort, two years ago, to equip a hundred of F-15Cs with heat sensing pods once used to equip navy F-14Ds (which were retired in 2006). The refurbished navy IRST pods would have enabled the F-15s to detect and track aircraft, over a hundred kilometers away, from the heat the target aircraft give off. IRST is a passive (it does not broadcast) sensor, thus it is undetectable by the enemy.

IRST has its limitations. The main ones are range (usually about 30 kilometers for accurate detection, farther for "something is there") and problems with clouds distorting the heat signature of the target. The short range means that another aircraft using its radar (which has a range of over 100 kilometers for precise identification) has an obvious edge. The distortion problems are slowly being solved by improved computer analysis of the detected image. Since many warplanes like to operate "quiet" (without any electronic transmissions), IRST becomes the best way to spot the other guy, and open fire, first. IRST is also capable to spotting stealth aircraft, which are protected from radar transmissions, but still have jet engines throwing off lots of heat. The F-14D IRST was notable for its long range. But at more than 30 kilometers, the IRST gave pretty vague data. Still, it's believed that just having an indication that someone is out there, more than a hundred kilometers away, gives you an edge.

The U.S. Navy is also installing a new IRST in its F-18Es, which will be mounted in a modified centerline drop tank (which will contain the IRST as well as 68 percent of the usual fuel). One problem with this approach is that the F-18E can't jettison this drop tank, to make itself more maneuverable for air-to-air combat. Other aircraft, like the F-22 and F-35, have the IRST built into the fuselage.
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