EUROSATORY 2022: New Sensor-to-Shooter System Coming Soon to U.S. Army (UPDATED)

Rafael illustration

PARIS —As the Pentagon looks to modernize military sensor-to-shooter technology, a new partnership between a French defense company and an Israeli one will put a next-generation system into the hands of U.S. soldiers. 

The two companies — Israeli Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and French Safran Vectronix — announced that they will begin officially marketing Rafael’s digitized sensor-to-shooter system program for land-based operations into Safran’s handheld binoculars known as Moskito TI.

Rafael's Fire Weaver system will eventually be integrated into all future target locators and those currently being used by infantry and special forces around the world, including those in the U.S. Army, said Patrick Drach, Safran’s vice president of sales and marketing.

Safran and Rafael signed an official agreement signaling the start of the marketing collaboration June 14 during the Eurosatory 2022 defense trade show in Paris, France.

“For Rafael, this is a good position for them to enter the market because we have customers, and the system, for us, is interesting for Safran to show more capability,” Drach said on the sidelines of the conference.

The Fire Weaver platform uses artificial intelligence to digitize real-time battlefield information from sensors and shooters on the ground and automatically determine the best shooter for a target.

With the system, a soldier can identify an enemy target from friendly ones, send a fire request to an offsite commander and receive a strike decision directly in the line of sight using augmented reality overlays on an aiming device — like the Moskito TI target locator.

By using AI, Fire Weaver both reduces the amount of data soldiers and commanders must sift through to make decisions, as well as the time it takes to make a final call for fire, said Shmulik Olanski, vice president and head of Rafael’s multi-domain warfare directorate.

“We reduced the time of the average time to close a [kill chain] to less than half a second,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has embraced the effort to hasten decision making using better connected sensors and shooters through what is known as the joint all-domain command and control concept in the United States. Each service has their own contribution to this modernization campaign, such as the Army's annual experimentation exercise Project Convergence. 

Another key aspect of Fire Weaver is its open architecture and easy-to-use interface, Olanski said. Rafael designed the system with the younger generation of soldiers in mind, Olanski added. Most only need three days to be trained on it completely.

Fire Weaver is currently used by the Israeli Defense Forces independent to the agreement with Moskito TI, but he said they are working with other customers who all share the same need for networked sensor-to-shooters.

“All those who are fighting ... in the environment that we are fighting today have the same challenges and the same need,” Olanski said.

This blog was updated to more accurately describe Shmulik Olanski's title. 

Topics: Army News