Live fire exercises currently are the best option that Army soldiers
have for conducting realistic training drills with indirect fire
weapons, such as artillery and grenade launchers. But the high cost
of munitions and environmental restrictions on live fires have sparked
interest in developing technologies that can simulate non-line-of-sight
firings in field exercises.
One of the most promising technologies—currently in the early
stages of development—is part of the so-called tactical engagement
simulations (ATES) program. The project’s success is tied
to an emerging form of radio communications called ultra-wide band.
Current force-on-force training systems rely on lasers to pair
and determine the result of shooter-target engagements. The most
widely used today is MILES, which stands for multiple integrated
laser engagement system. The MILES 2000 is a laser-based training
system in which soldiers fire infrared “bullets” from
the same weapons and vehicles that they would use in actual combat.
The exercise events and casualties are recorded, replayed and analyzed.
When MILES-equipped soldiers train in a simulated close-combat
engagement, laser pulses are sent from a rifle-mounted transmitter
to a detection device worn by a soldier from the opposing force.
That pulse follows a straight line. MILES, however, has limited
use in non-line-of-sight firings—and its capability is degraded
by dust and smoke, Army and industry experts said.
The planned development of an advanced dual-mode infantry rifle
for the Army, called the objective individual combat weapon (OICW),
means that new training capabilities will be needed, beyond what
MILES provides, these experts said. The OICW—which could be
fielded as early as 2008—has a ranged air-burst capability
for 20 mm high energy rounds, in addition to being a conventional
rifle. The long-range air-bursting capability is not represented
in the MILES system and shooting live OICW rounds will be expensive,
at $30 or so apiece. The Army’s Simulation, Training and Instrumentation
Command (STRICOM) is looking at the ATES technology as a possible
training solution.
The ATES science and technology effort will continue until 2002,
said Troy Dere, principal investigator for the ATES project. “The
goal is to complete the research and development necessary to prove
a new way of training,” he said in an interview.
“In the current way of training, we have no adequate means
of training soldiers to use weapons when you can’t see the
opponent, meaning indirect fire weapons,” said Dere. “The
MILES program can only do direct-fire weapons. They have some methods
by which they can artificially simulate but, in my opinion, simulate
poorly, indirect fire weapons.”
A laser beam is a direct-energy weapon. “If you can’t
see your opponent, it doesn’t work very well,” Dere
said. With indirect fire, explosive rounds or over-the-horizon shooting,
he added, “we need to be able to train soldiers how to use
those weapons” other than through live firings.
“So far, our modeling has been limited to laboratory exercises,
simulations on computers,” he said. “But we are getting
very close to starting some hardware demonstrations.”
The OICW weapon can be programmed to explode at a distance, “so
you could program it to shoot into the window of a building, for
instance, where you couldn’t see your opponent but you could
program the round to explode after it goes through the window,”
explained Dere. In an urban environment, “you have all sorts
of problems,” he added, such as reflection of radio signals.
“Sometimes you can see your opponents, sometimes you can’t.
It’s the toughest environment.”
STRICOM is working with the developers of OICW on how the training
equipment would be integrated with the weapon. “But we are
a long way away from that,” Dere noted. “The Marine
Corps will be fielding OICW too, so they are interested in the trainer.”
The ultra-wide band (UWB) technology is the foundation of ATES.
“Something like the UWB approach holds the most promise to
give us that type of training,” said Dere.
The provider of the UWB communications and position-location links
for ATES is Time Domain, based in Huntsville, Ala.
“Our technology is a completely different approach to doing
radio and position location tracking,” said Kevin Davis, head
of Time Domain’s government and defense group. “It is
fundamentally different in that we use very short pulses of energy
instead of a continuous wave,” he said in an interview.
Frequency domain radios—typically used by military operators
and in AM/FM broadcasts—are continuous wave. “We are
not using a frequency or continuous wave system, but an ultra-wide
band impulse communication,” Davis said. That approach involves
firing extremely short-duration pulses at a very high rate. Those
pulses are spread over large amounts of bandwidth. The UWB underlies
the spectrum currently used by frequency domain systems that are
found in today’s military and commercial radios.
The only way to simulate indirect fire accurately is to have precise
location information so that a ballistic path of the round can be
created in a computer simulation, explained Daniel E. Mullally,
a research scientist at the University of Central Florida’s
Institute for Simulation and Training, in Orlando, Fla. The institute
is working with STRICOM on the ATES program. Another partner in
the program is Sparta Inc., based in Huntsville.
With ATES, Mullally said, “We pair up the location between
the fire and the target and determine incapacitation, hit or kill.”
The UWB enables data transmissions between the target and the weapon
that fired, and also helps to locate the players on the battlefield.
“Since we are using time-modulated ultra-wide band, we have
the capability to determine exactly where things are in space, by
measuring the time of travel between the antennas erected around
the training area and the individual or the weapon, or the sensor
placed on the body of the soldier.
“We’ll be able to data log the soldiers’ exact
positions and firings. In the after-action review, we will be able
to provide a detailed critique.”
Mullally acknowledged that this technology has yet to mature. “This
is cutting-edge emerging technology. ... Accurate location is what
we are trying to achieve.”
Training Requirements
ATES is not only being designed for OICW training, but also to train
future users of the objective crew-served weapon, a 25 mm system
to replace the 50-caliber machine gun and the Mk 19 40 mm machine
gun. The crew-served weapon will have a range of 2,000 meters, while
the OICW range is about 1,000 meters. ATES also will support training
requirements for the M203 grenade launcher and the 60 mm M224 lightweight
mortar.
Time Domain’s Davis explained that UWB offers much promise
for communications and position-location systems used in complex
battle zones such as urban areas. That is where “the traditional
systems begin to fall short,” he said.
He does not believe UWB signals would conflict with conventional
radio signals because UWB operates at extremely low power, in what
is known as the “noise level.” The noise is the background,
the signal is what is heard.
“When it comes to signal-to-noise ratio, we operate in the
noise,” Davis said. “The level of energy we transmit
is as low as an appliance. ... We run low power in order to have
high data rate, to share spectrum, and to operate in high multi-path
environments.”
UWB technology is “very high bandwidth, both in spectrum
and in terms of data capacity,” said Davis. “But we
are not breaking the laws of physics.” The extremely short
pulses in the UWB (each pulse is one 500 trillionth of a second
long) have similar behavior characteristics as the systems in the
2 gigahertz frequency range, which are line-of-sight systems, he
added. The pulses, because they are not continuous waveform, have
more penetration capability through building materials. “We
go straight through walls and floors, in a line-of-sight way,”
he said. “Those walls are transparent to our signal.”
For civilian applications of UWB, the focus is on wireless local
area networks, Davis said. “We are not trying to replace the
cell phone.” UWB could be used inside buildings, and then
it would switch over to conventional cell phone architecture outdoors.
Cells phones, he noted, often have difficulties in buildings and
garages.
“Our technology is very robust in those areas where traditional
technologies are challenged—where regular radios or any frequency
domain radio have most difficulty being functional and reliable,
our radio technology is particularly valuable because that is where
it works the best.”
Time Domain’s brand of UWB is called “time modulation,”
or TM-UWB, which is sold as silicon-germanium chip sets called PulseOn.
“We have it down to systems that are the size of a desk phone
or slightly bigger,” said Davis.
The systems for the ATES program use PulseON chip sets, which are
small and can be made in large quantities at low prices, he said.
The TM-UWB component on the OICW rifle will be antennas on the
weapon so users can determine the azimuth, or the aim of the weapon.
The company also is developing a calibration instrument. “The
calibration and the simulation of the weapon would dovetail nicely
with the position-location tracking communications capability that
they will be examining for other applications, such as soldier communications
and soldier tracking inside buildings.”
One of the reasons STRICOM became interested in this technology
two years ago, Davis said, was because scientists were having difficulties
finding reliable means to track and communicate with soldiers inside
buildings.
The Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system generally is not
available unless there is line-of-sight on three or more satellites,
Davis explained. “You don’t get line-of-sight when you
have ceilings over you. GPS is a continuous wave, weak signal that
has difficulty penetrating buildings. We are looking to complement
or augment GPS.”
Time Domain officials recently briefed the Joint Tactical Radio
System program office, managed by the U.S. Army. That program aims
to develop a common software-based radio that can support dozens
of radio waveforms from all military services. “If that program
is successful, it must be able to support new and emerging waveforms,”
Davis said. “There ought to be a way for us and for other
emerging technologies to plug into that architecture using our chips,
our antenna, to get access. Our architecture is a pure digital system,
has all those things the JTRS program is targeted to accomplish.”
Time modulation UWB is only one of possibly many other techniques
for implementing this technology, Davis said. “In the future,
there may be many different ways to do UWB as there are ways to
do frequency domain radios.”
The company is awaiting approval from the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) before it can commercialize UWB technology. For
military experiments, however, no such approval is required, said
Eileen A. Heaton, Time Domain spokeswoman. “We do not need
an FCC rule-making to use UWB in the military.”
UWB can operate in rain, smoke and fog, as well as with battlefield
obscurants, Davis said.
One of the main challenges for this technology is interference
mitigation, to prevent other radio users from blocking UWB signals.
“Our architecture has to have an elegant way of withstanding
interference from high-powered users in band,” said Davis.
“That is part of the trick—withstanding interference
from other users.”
Detection Device
Time Domain also is working on another STRICOM technology demonstration
program called the lightweight personnel detection device (LPDD).
The prime contractor in this project is the Boeing Company’s
military technology division, in St. Louis.
LPDD is an advanced instrumentation package for infantry troops
that, if successful, will replace older versions of the MILES training
system, said Cory Youmans, project director for instrumentation
management at STRICOM.
LPDD is conceived as a replacement for the old MILES (called SAWE
II), not the new MILES 2000, which is non-instrumented, meaning
it is not equipped with GPS receivers or radio transmitters.
“Up until now, MILES 2000 was only used for home station
training. In the future, it will go to the combat training centers,”
Youmans said in an interview. Because there is no plan to instrument
the MILES 2000, the LPDD program will attempt to provide miniaturized
GPS and radio systems for tactical training. “So if you wanted
to adapt a MILES 2000 device in the future, or build systems like
the LPDD, the technology will be there to support it.”
There is a requirement for 24,000 instrumented MILES systems for
the Army’s three combat training centers at Fort Polk, La.,
at Fort Irwin, Calif. and the Combat Maneuver Training Center, in
Germany, Youmans said. “The original intent was not to have
MILES 2000 at the training centers. But we found that it needs to
go there. So I would expect that in the future, you will see that
requirement modified to include instrumentation, position location
radio and GPS.
The Army would like to replace all 6,080 SAWE II MILES systems
fielded in the 1990s, Youmans said. They are heavy, at 14-16 pounds,
and expensive to operate. They use bulky lithium batteries that
weigh 2.2 pounds each and cost about $60 per soldier per day. “The
systems are rarely used because they are not ‘soldier friendly,’”
said Youmans. The LPDD uses inexpensive AA alkaline batteries which
operate the system for 2-3 days, depending on how and where it is
used.
“At the training centers now, there is a lot of old MILES
gear. MILES 2000 will replace that,” he said. But the LPDD
could supplement MILES 2000, which is not instrumented. “Depending
on the program, you could incorporate the LPDD technology into a
follow-on buy for MILES 2000, if you wanted to instrument and add
a GPS receiver or a radio transceiver, so you could track soldiers
on the battlefield.
“If you want to know what is happening in real time, track
your soldiers all the time, you have to have a SAWE II MILES-equipped
soldier or an LPDD-equipped soldier with a radio or GPS receiver,”
Youmans said. “With the MILES 2000, you would not know where
your soldiers are at any given time, because there is no radio or
GPS.” The goal of the LPDD program, he added, is to demonstrate
that the technology exists to produce a lightweight, low power device
to replace the older, heavier systems now used to train soldiers
at the Combat Training Centers.
Because of its weight, SAWE II MILES mostly is now used to track
vehicles, where bulkiness is not as big an issue. But the Army wants
to be able to track individual soldiers, which is the primary reason
for pursuing the LPDD. The non-instrumented MILES 2000 gear weighs
4 pounds.
During the recent “joint contingency force advanced war-fighting
exercise” at Fort Polk, the opposing force was given 30 LPDD
prototypes, Youmans said. The goal was to test how well the systems
could engage the blue force from the Army’s 10th Mountain
Division.
LPDD gear weighs 3 pounds. It consists of a vest with laser detectors,
a helmet assembly that can be adapted as a hat, a laser transmitter
at the end of the rifle and a box with a computer, a radio and a
GPS receiver. Soldiers mount a MILES-compatible laser transmitter
on their M16A2 or M4 rifle and “shoot” other similarly
equipped soldiers. Each soldier wears laser detector arrays on his
hat/helmet and torso that record where the soldier was “hit.”
The system, unlike the MILES 2000, has a GPS receiver which records
each soldier’s position on the battlefield throughout the
training exercise. It also has a radio, which sends information
about each force-on-force engagement back to a central station for
real-time display and after-action review.
STRICOM awarded a contract to the Boeing Company in September 1999,
to build 30 prototype devices to demonstrate the LPDD technology.
Boeing’s team includes Inter-Coastal Electronics (Mesa, Ariz.),
Oerlikon Contraves AG (Zurich, Switzerland), Time Domain and DRS
Optronics (Melbourne, Fla.). The 30 systems were delivered in June,
said Joe Russek, LPDD program manager at Boeing.
The current systems only use GPS and radio frequency technologies,
said Russek in an interview. “But UWB is being looked at.”
That technology is not integrated into the program yet, because
it has not fully matured, said Russek. “UWB is in the forefront
and has a lot of potential, but it is not yet mature enough to be
used in LPDD.”
The LPDD program, said Youmans, is working with the ATES project
in evaluating UWB, “to see if the technology can replace the
GPS and radios we now use.” The current GPS technology provides
accuracy to a couple of meters. “If UWB proves out, it will
give us centimeters’ accuracy. That gives us a big edge when
we try to train indirect fire weapons, because you need to know
precisely where the target is, so you can predict where the round
will land.”
STRICOM also plans to adapt the LPDD system to meet Marine Corps
requirements. “We are going to provide them with 12 prototypes
by January 2001,” said Youmans. “They will assess how
well this system works in the urban warfare training requirements.
“The low weight, low power nature of this technology means
that we can provide the infantry soldier with a highly realistic,
highly functional training device that doesn’t interfere with
his tactical equipment.
“Our only challenge is coming up with the money to build
the new systems for our three Combat Training Centers,” Youmans
said. “We have a requirement to buy 24,000 systems, but current
fiscal constraints have pushed the fielding date out at least four
to five years.”
STRICOM ultimately wants to integrate tactical engagement simulation
into all new tactical weapon platforms. “We’ve made
huge technology advances in miniaturization and power conservation.
... Now the challenge is to get the technologies to the troops.”
The MILES prime contractor, Cubic Defense Systems, meanwhile, has
developed a ground instrumentation system, where each of the players
has a GPS and a radio link connected to a central site. “We
are able to use that radio link in the instrumentation system to
model the non-line-of-sight weapons,” said Seth Bokmeyer,
director of business development at Cubic, in San Diego. “We
are looking at different concepts and haven’t decided which
we would propose,” he said in an interview. “MILES would
be part of it. There will be a need for instrumentation to augment
MILES.”
The company has delivered 9,000 soldier-wearable systems and 300
vehicle-mounted systems. Last February, Cubic was awarded a $24
million contract to provide MILES 2000 equipment. STRICOM so far
has placed $134 million worth of orders.