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 An Army official said new sensors developed by Lockheed Martin
Corp over the past four years could help avoid mistakes such as the
2007 attack by two U.S. Apache helicopters that killed 12 people in
Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff, after they were mistaken
for armed insurgents.
U.S. Central Command has said an investigation of the incident found
that U.S. forces were not aware of the presence of the news staffers
and believed a camera held by one of the men was a rocket-propelled
grenade launcher.
"This additional situational awareness ... will give soldiers what
they need to make the right decisions on the battlefield," Army
Lieutenant Colonel Steven Van Riper, the Army's product manager for
the Apache sensors, told reporters when asked if the new technology
help avert such mistakes.
"That's our goal ... This will cut dramatically the amount of voice
communications and other things that take precious time on the
battlefield, time that could be used better to make decisions," he
said during a demonstration at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville,
Alabama, where the Army tests new aircraft.
"Now they can focus on those tasks and not worry, 'Am I looking at
the right thing?'"
Van Riper said the new sensors would help pilots better track
suspicious cars identified by troops on the ground by their color,
or even individuals tagged in specific clothes.
"We'll be able to see the red car versus the blue car, or the yellow
building versus the green building, whereas before we were totally
reliant on being able to communicate either verbally or through
tactical text messages," he said.
Army officials showcased the new equipment during a flight at the
sprawling facility in Huntsville, showing reporters a side-by-side
comparison of the black-and-white video captured by the current
sensors on Boeing Co Apache helicopters, and the new high-definition
color equipment. Van Riper said the Army was moving to implement
the technology as quickly as possible, but said it could take seven
years before all 680 Apache E-models are retrofitted with the new
color sensors and displays. He said the equipment would be the most
advanced on any rotorcraft used by the regular Army, although some
special forces had similar equipment.
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The technology changes, developed at a cost of $60 million over the
past four years, grew out of an effort to remove obsolescent parts
from the overall sensor package, which was first developed 30 years
ago, Army officials said.
Apache pilots are enthusiastic about the changes.
Chief Warrant Office Paul Steele, an experimental test pilot who has
been flying Apache helicopters since 1991, told reporters that the
new equipment marked "a great leap" in a pilot's ability to operate
on the battlefield.
Van Riper said the Army hoped to award Lockheed a contract to start
building the sensor upgrade kits in fiscal year 2015, which begins
October 1, after completing additional flight and environmental
testing in coming months.
He declined to estimate what the new equipment would cost, saying
the amount had yet to be negotiated with the company.
Matthew Hoffman, the Lockheed official in charge of the Apache
sensor upgrade programs, said the new system was nearly three times
more reliable and easier to maintain that the old one. The new
sensors also allows pilots to see near-infrared imaging data
together on one screen with the color imagery.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by Nick Zieminski)
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