sotech 9-9 (nov./dec. 2011)

Growth Leader

Col. Jay Wolff

Commander95th Civil Affairs Brigade (Airborne)

Mobile Communications O Suppressors O Camouflage Tactical Cloud O Eye and Hearing Protection

November/December 2011

Volume 9, Issue 9

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The combat-proven General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Predator B unmanned aircraft has provided persistent situational awareness across the maritime domain since 2004. This multi-mission aircraft flies long-endurance maritime surveillance and reconnaissance missions – detect-ing, identifying, and tracking surface contacts with unsurpassed precision while streaming real-time imagery to anywhere in the world. Flown by the U.S. Navy, the multi-purpose Predator B aircraft enables flexible employment for diverse missions over land or sea. The maritime-configured Predator B is currently safeguarding the seaward approaches to the U.S. for the Department of Homeland Security. Equipped with a digital 360º multi-mode maritime radar, Automatic Identification System (AIS), and a high-resolution Electro-Optic/Infrared (EO/IR) system, Predator B provides proven and unsurpassed littoral and open ocean surveillance capabilities. Predator B: Predator B: A proven and cost-effective force multiplier. Not only operational, but indispensable.

Maritime ISR

Count on Us

L e a d i n g T h e S i t u a t i o n a l A w a r e n e s s R e v o l u t i o n w w w . g a - a s i . c o m© 2 0 11 G e n e r a l A t o m i c s A e r o n a u t i c a l S y s t e m s , I n c .

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SpECial OpEraTiOnS TECHnOlOgy nOvEmbEr/DECEmbEr 2011 vOlumE 9 • iSSuE 9

FEaTurES COvEr / Q&a

DEparTmEnTS2

3

4

14

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Editor’s Perspective

Whispers

People

Black Watch

Calendar, Directory

inDuSTry inTErviEw

Herbert B. Rubens, Ph.D.CEO and Co-founder

Persistent Systems LLC

28

Colonel Jay WolffCommander

95th Civil Affairs Brigade(Airborne)

20

Mobile CommunicationsIn an era where constant communications provide the winning edge in war, we examine the latest technology linking warfighters with critical intel, video and more.By Christian Bourge

16

24

Camouflage CapabilitiesIs it possible to develop a single camouflage pattern that would protect soldiers in all kinds of environments? The answer, at this point, is decidedly negative. But emergent technologies may make this possible.By Peter Buxbaum

12

The Cloud in CombatDriven by young, tech-savvy warfighters, today’s cloud computing trend has the potential to enable new mission capabilities for special operations forces while optimizing the costs of acquiring, inserting and sustaining information technology.By Eric Marks

10

Indispensable SuppressorsSilencers can save warfighters from suffering hearing loss, provide them with greater situational awareness if they encounter enemy sniper fire, and save the Department of Defense hundreds of millions of dollars.By Dave Ahearn

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Eye and Hearing ProtectionEven in the 21st century, the human senses of sight and hearing can mean the difference between another U.S. casualty statistic or an American soldier prevailing over the enemy. We examine the vast array of systems protecting hearing and sight.By Henry Canaday

There is an assumption that because Congress likely won’t make any deep cuts in funding for special operations organizations, that special ops personnel have nothing to worry about in the upcoming $450 billion to $1 trillion in defense cuts to be imposed over the coming decade. Not so.

First, even if members of Congress approve top line budget numbers for special operations units as they are requested for fiscal 2012, that doesn’t necessarily mean all SOF programs will be provided full funding. And even if they are fully funded for fiscal 2012, that doesn’t guarantee full funding in later years.

To get a sense of what those later years hold, watch what Congress ultimately does with a new multi-year program, such as the emergent Ground Mobility Vehicle effort to supply specifically modified vehicles for each special ops branch. If the GMV program is fully funded indefinitely, that’s a positive sign. Anything less could be a cautionary signal.

But the threat doesn’t end there.Consider that special operators, working in small units, require the assistance of regular forces for

myriad things. From Army tanker truck convoys providing fuel for SOF vehicles to a submarine taking SEALs near enough to an enemy shore to slip to an objective unseen, the larger armed services are crucial to SOF remaining operational.

And the budget ax may be about to fall on many of those services.To cite one example of the true jointness of special ops, consider the Air Force CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor

aircraft. It can fly close to 300 miles an hour, double the speed of some helicopters, to insert special operators near an objective. Truly, special operators depend heavily on the larger services.

So the bottom budget line is: Special ops programs are at risk in the current budget battles on Capitol Hill, even if gigantic added cuts (sequestration) don’t materialize to hit defense programs.

It is incumbent upon senators and representatives, especially those on key committees, to ensure that deep budget cuts don’t harm the ability of special operators—or other personnel—to execute their missions in support of national defense.

Dave AhearnEditor

World’s Largest Distributed Special Ops Magazine

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Army to Gain Robotic AssetsReconRobotics Inc. announced

it has been awarded a $4.8 million contract from the U.S. Army Rapid Equipping Force for 315 Recon Scout XT micro-robot kits and an equal number of SearchStick devices. The SearchStick enables warfighters to convert any Recon Scout Throwbot into a pole camera, which warfighters can use to see over compound walls, onto rooftops and into culverts.

“The era of the personal robot has arrived for U.S. troops and, like the ballistic vest and night vision goggles, our Recon Scout XTs will save many lives,” said Ernest Langdon, director of military programs for ReconRobotics. “We are extremely proud that the U.S. mili-tary has chosen ReconRobotics to help protect our warfighters as they conduct dismounted operations in theater.”

Recon Scout XT micro-robots are deployed at the fire-team level—

one robot for each four- to six-man fire team—to maximize situational awareness and standoff distance during route- and compound-clearing operations.

More than 2,000 of the company’s Recon Scout systems have been deployed by the U.S. military and international friendly forces, and

by hundreds of law enforcement agencies worldwide. Warfighters use the Recon Scout system to determine the layout of enclosed spaces, to identify potential IEDs, and to fix the location of friendly, indigenous or enemy personnel.

The company’s Recon Scout XT

weighs just 1.2 pounds and can be deployed in five seconds and thrown up to 120 feet. Highly regarded for its simplicity and durability, the XT can be controlled with a single button and can be recharged in the field using standard 5590 or 2590 batteries.

Army to Obtain Support for Chinook Aircraft Renewal

The Boeing Co., Ridley Park, Pa., was awarded a $6.8 million firm fixed-price contract that modifies an existing pact for support of the CH-47F Chinook helicopter renew aircraft. Work will be performed in Ridley Park, Pa., with an estimated completion date of December 31, 2015. One bid was solicited, with one bid received. The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity.

Vehicle Network Unveiled at SOF Industry

Conference

Northrop Grumman unveiled the new Smart Integrated Vehicle Area Network (SiVAN), which provides even greater capabilities and important reductions in size, weight and power over larger centralized hub style systems while still reducing warfighter workload and greatly enhancing situational awareness. The system debuted at a special operations forces industry conference in Baltimore.

SiVAN builds on Northrop Grumman’s innovative vehicle digital backbone technology. The company’s open architecture, “plug-and-play” digital backbone is designed specifically for military vehicles and brings highly survivable network communications, sensor integration and cross-cueing to ground vehicle plat-forms.

Scalable and modular, SiVAN is compliant with the VICTORY (vehicular integration for C4ISR/electronic warfare interoperability) architecture and consists of two commercial off-the-shelf components: a device interface node and a common display connected using a gigabit Ethernet (802.3) creating a fault tolerant, ring architecture utilizing standard IP networking technologies.

“Users at recent SiVAN field tests were extremely pleased with the system’s overall superior perfor-mance, ranging from simplicity of design and ease of installation to exceptionally low video latency and minimal vehicle footprint,” said Kay Burch, vice president of communications, intelligence and networking solutions for Northrop Grumman’s Land and Self Protection Systems Division. “Invariably, we find vehicle crewmembers are immediately comfort-able and confident using the intuitive and very user-friendly graphics user interface.”

SiVAN’s heritage is rooted in the avionics industry, where reliable, low-latency performance, combined with fault tolerance and graceful degradation of capabilities, is critical. Northrop Grumman brings this heritage in a tailored and scalable architecture to the ground vehicle operational environment, providing a simple, common sensor integration suite that is avail-able now.

“We provide an inherently future-proofed archi-tecture designed to integrate today’s legacy stove-piped systems simply and efficiently while accommodating future capabilities and technologies as they come online,” Burch said.

www.SOTECH-kmi.com SOTECH 9.9 | 3

peopleCompiled by KMI Media Group staff

Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland Jr.

Army Lieutenant General John F. Mulholland Jr. has been selected for reappointment to the rank of lieutenant general and for assignment as deputy commander, U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. Mulholland is currently serving as the commanding general, U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, N.C.

Army Brigadier General Raymond A. Thomas III has received appointment to the rank of major general. Thomas is currently serving as deputy commander, Joint Special Operations Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, N.C.

Airmen gathered to render a final salute to retired Major General John Alison as he was laid to rest at Arlington National

Cemetery. In 1943, Alison was selected as deputy commander of the 1st Air Commando Group. In 2005, he was enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame and most recently was the first inductee into the U.S. Special Operations Command’s Commando Hall of Honor in October 2010.

Adm. Bill H. McRaven

Admiral Bill H. McRaven, commander U.S. Special Operations Command, passed the sword to Command Sergeant Major Chris Faris during a change of responsibility ceremony at the command’s headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. Faris replaced Command Sergeant Major Thomas H. Smith.

Two Air Force Special Operations Command combat controllers were presented military decorations

by General Norton Schwartz, Air Force chief of staff, for exhibiting extraordinary heroism in combat. Staff Sergeant Robert Gutierrez Jr. was presented the Air Force Cross and Technical Sergeant Ismael Villegas was presented the Silver Star. Both Airmen received their awards for gallant action during combat operations in 2009 that directly contributed to saving lives of their teammates and demolishing enemy forces. Gutierrez and Villegas were both assigned to the 21st Special Tactics Squadron, Pope Field, N.C., when they deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2009, although the two medals are not related to the same operation.

The Boeing board of directors has elected Larry Kellner as a new director. Kellner is president of Emerald Creek Group, a private equity firm based in Houston. From 2004 through 2009 he was chairman and chief executive officer of Continental Airlines.

Stanley T. Fleming has joined

CloudShield, an SAIC unit, as president and chief operating officer. Fleming will serve as the key strategist and business driver of the organization with responsibility for day-to-day operating activities, including revenue and sales growth.

Walt Havenstein

Walt Havenstein will retire as SAIC chief executive officer effective June 15, 2012. Havenstein came to SAIC after more than 25 years of industry leadership, including serving as president and CEO of BAE Systems Inc.

The Institute for Defense and Business has named Northrop Grumman leader James M. Zortman one of five 2011-2012 executive fellows chosen for their outstanding military service record and demonstrated ability as thought leaders. Zortman, a retired U.S. Navy vice

admiral, is sector vice president of Life Cycle Logistics and Support for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. Zortman also serves as site manager of Northrop Grumman’s Unmanned Systems Development Center in San Diego.

Textron Systems announced retired Army Major General James W. Parker, who served in special operations missions with USSOCOM and other organizations, will become vice president to manage its Tampa, Fla., field office as it expands relations with USSOCOM and USCENTCOM.

Lieutenant General David P. Fridovich, deputy commander, Special Operations Command and the senior green beret of the Army, retired after more than 37 years service.

Eye and Hearing

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SOTECH_9-9.indd 4 11/21/11 4:33 PM

Even in the 21st century, the human senses of sight and hear-ing can mean the difference between another U.S. casualty statis-tic or an American soldier prevailing over the enemy in combat. Warfighters thus are indebted to industry innovators who have devised a broad array of advanced-technology systems to protect combatants’ eyesight and hearing.

We examine the panoply of these vital systems, beginning with hearing protection.

Hearing Protection

Vendors are intensely involved in protecting soldiers from hearing loss. For example, TEA’s biggest customer is SOCOM. “They have been using hearing protection regularly for 10 years,” said Director of Business Development Steve Tocidlowski. “But the products are starting to attract attention in the green Army, too.”

The challenge is maintaining situational awareness with hear-ing protection. TEA does that electronically. Its battery-powered earmuff or in-ear devices compress sounds over 85 decibels, so sol-diers can have face-to-face conversations even with weapons firing.

Hearing loss begins when soldiers are exposed to more than 85 decibels on average during an eight-hour period. Firing weapons can yield 140 to 160 decibels. And there can be constant noise over 105 decibels in helicopters or armored vehicles. TEA’s high-threat headset reduces noise by 19 decibels, offering significant protec-tion against sharp, instantaneous sound peaks.

TEA now makes a digital-ear system for in-ear protection, which maintains situational awareness and allows soldiers to com-municate with better signals provided by digital techniques.

The other challenge is maintaining radio or other elec-tronic communications. TEA’s in-ear devices use bone-conduction microphones so that speech is transmitted up from the jawbone to the ear bones and out on radios or intercom.

Getting soldiers to use hearing protection can be challenging, due to discomfort, awkwardness or heat. Tocidlowski argued TEA

equipment provides comfort and is not obtrusive while providing a high level of protection.

“The Invisio X5 provides one of the most comfortable fits,” said Nick Lafferty, TEA director of marketing and training. “One of the biggest distinctions between our product and other [hearing protection] products is we use a patented bone conduction tech-nology,” Lafferty explained. “We also have patented the comfort providers that keep the bud in the ear,” he continued. “We call that Soft Spring.”

Aside from blocking unwanted and harmful loud noises, TEA hearing protection systems also are distinguished by permitting warfighters to hear sounds that are critical to situational aware-ness, Lafferty said.

“Another big thing is the situational awareness,” he said, pro-viding “combat situational awareness with pinpoint accuracy” to tell a warfighter such as a special operator precisely where enemy gunfire is originating.

For comfort, he added, “we offer a fully customized ear piece,” the X6 custom-molded version of the ear bud that conforms to the precise shape of the warfighter’s ear canal.

Bose emphasizes new technologies and a balanced approach to protecting headset wearers in noise-filled environments. Bose uses a combination of passive and active noise reduction to reduce damaging sound pressure at the ear. In active reduction, advanced electronic circuitry monitors sound at the ear, identifies unwanted noise and creates an out-of-phase signal to reduce noise.

Bose’s latest military products include the TriPort Tactical Headset Series II. The Triport is primarily used in wheeled tactical vehicles, where soldiers experience noisy operations but critical communications must take place. Bose headsets are used in every branch of the U.S. armed services and by many foreign militar-ies. They are in M1A1 Abrams tanks, Strykers and mine resistant ambush protected vehicles.

In January 2011, Silynx Communications launched the 20-meter immersible Micro C4OPS tactical communication

ProtectionSoldierS’ SenSeS are Safeguarded by new-generation tecHnologieS.by Henry canaday

SotecH correSPondent

Eye and Hearing


headset with hearing protection and enhancement. The new model is a miniaturized and enhanced version of Silynx’s C4OPS. “It’s the only 20 mm immersible system on the market,” stressed CEO Gil Limonchik.

The Micro C4OPS is modular and interchangeable with head-set configurations including in-ear, covert, maritime and earmuff headsets. The basic configuration is two in-ear buds. For covert missions, the system can be concealed under a shirt with a wireless ear piece. The maritime headset allows soldiers to go down to 20 meters underwater while maintaining functioning communication.

“It has enhanced noise compression algorithms with active noise reduction,” Limonchik explained. There is an automatic leak test that ensures ear buds are sealed correctly. “That is unique,” he noted.

The Micro C4OPS can handle radio communication, data or GPS. It can change channels with voice prompts, selecting channels with pre-assigned frequencies. “It has an automatic whisper mode,” Limonchik said.

Another Silynx innovation is the C4OPS Hybrid Headset, designed for loud and clear communications in extreme noise environments such as helicopters. A quick-disconnect on the collar clip allows connection of a noise-canceling boom microphone. This microphone can be easily removed with automatic switchover to the in-ear microphone. Another version mounts the boom microphone on a headband worn alone or under a helmet.

Silynx has released C4Grip, a two-meter immersible smart forward grip for assault rifles. A standard KM2 flashlight head can mount in front of the C4Grip, reducing weight by eliminating the need for a weapon-mounted flashlight and reducing cable clutter. The C4Grip wirelessly controls tactical radios and activates flash-light and laser aiming devices. “You control all of these without taking your hands off the weapon,” Limonchik explained.

The basic C4OPS system has been adopted by U.S. special o perations forces, top NATO forces, the FBI and by Army, Navy and Air Force units. Limonchik emphasized that Silynx equipment has been adopted at command levels, not sporadically by small units.

Brian Burns, who leads business development government pro-grams at Nacre, described the company’s QuietPro family as in-ear digital hearing systems that protect against the entire spectrum of impulse and continuous noise while enabling tactical commu-nications on handheld radios or vehicle intercoms, giving users complete enhanced situational awareness. “It is automatic and adaptive,” Burns said. “There is no need to turn it on to check on background noise. It can raise ambient sounds up to five times to enhance situational awareness,” he said.

With patented digital signal-processing, QuietPro checks for tight seal of foam ear-tips so hearing is protected and in-ear micro-phones can communicate clearly on radios. Digital technology samples for dangerous noise 16,000 times per second and processes sound in less than one millisecond, providing superb protection and avoiding delays when talking face to face. Faster processing catches high-frequency impulse noises, for example from explosions, before they do damage. “We are faster than anyone else,” Burns empha-sized.

Low-frequency continuous noise is also dangerous, resonating through bone and flesh. QuietPro uses digital adaptive active noise reduction with compensating white noise waves for this threat.

Nacre’s new QuietPro QP400 for the military has additional features, adapts to a wide range of communications and can

maintain simultaneous connections with up to four personal or mounted radios.

The QuietPro family has been approved for the Army’s Tactical Communication and Protection System. Some 45,000 QuietPros have been sold to the Marines and 60,000 have been sold world-wide.

Threat4 CEO Patrick Armstrong said protecting hearing while preserving fighting capability presents tough problems. “You can issue ear plugs, but soldiers won’t wear them, because they need to hear the environment,” Armstrong said. Traditional radio headsets give audio reception, but do not allow for face-to-face communica-tion and give no clue to direction of sounds. In-ear buds give better hearing protection but still do not localize sounds. “Hearing pro-tection is easy, and using the radio is easy. It is harder to preserve natural hearing,” he observed.

Threat4 hired an audiologist from the hearing-aid industry to develop algorithms that reproduce the human ear through digital signals. “We merged hearing-aid technology with hearing protec-tion,” he continued. “It is unique because it returns almost-human ear performance even though the soldier is fully protected.”

Threat4’s new x-62000 in-ear digital headset with boom micro-phone is certified for 32dB to 39dB noise protection, yet yields true 360-degree situational awareness and sound localization. It works out of the box and requires no programming of software. All electronics are mounted in the headset, so it requires no separate control box. It draws parasitic power from radios.

X-620000’s digital technology avoids nausea that afflicts many soldiers using older noise-reduction technologies. It handles the entire human spectrum of sound frequencies. The National Tacti-cal Officers Association rated the x-62000 4.8 out of a possible 5.

Armstrong said that the new-generation device is also the most affordable of comparable equipment, adding, “We are the best and the cheapest.”

Lieutenant Colonel Jose Capo-Aponte, research optometrist and chief, visual sciences branch of U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory (USAARL), said eye protection is widely used in the services now. “The major problem is that the eye protection, no matter how good, is always behind the threat,” he cautioned. “The threat just keeps getting worse.”

Battlefield ocular traumas are now about 13 percent of non-lethal battlefield injuries and this portion is increasing, even though eye protection is worn 95 percent of the time outside the wire. Partly, this high percentage reflects better armor and medical care for other injuries. But Capo-Aponte argued that eye protection must continue to improve.

Current issues are protecting eyes from both primary blasts and secondary, tertiary and quaternary blast effects such as energized debris and shrapnel, flash burns and other blunt and penetrating traumas.

One need is new materials that can provide stronger resistance to shattering without disrupting vision. This requires optimal transparency and elimination of distortion and prismatic effects even when the material is shaped to increase protection. “Wrap-around shapes using current materials tend to create distortion or prismatic effects that hinder visual performance,” Capo-Aponte noted.

Another challenge is developing lenses that can rapidly change between dark-tinted to clear. “By rapid, we mean a change in the lens optical density in just a second or so,” Capo-Aponte said.


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Current materials and technology do not provide a rapid change in optical density, from sunglasses to completely transparent and back again. “They are slow and the dynamic range is narrow,” he observed.

Another issue is that eyewear shape must interface effectively with equipment and protect eyes without affecting the protection of other combat systems, particularly hearing-protection devices.

USAARL is evaluating effects of blasts on ocular structures and current military eyewear. It is also developing ophthalmic standards to optimize design and compatibility of eyewear with other protective systems to guide developers of protective equip-ment.

Heavyglare offers many brands and styles of shatter-resistant eye protection gear to the military, and provides stronger pre-scriptions than some laboratories, Heavyglare CEO Grant Lam-bert said. Safety and protection for warfighters are paramount. Whichever eyewear gear is chosen, “normally it has a polycarbon-ate shatter-resistant lens in it, and it will [meet] the different mili-tary and OSHA safety standards for shatter-resistance,” Lambert said in an interview.

Heavyglare distinguishes itself in its prescription capabilities, he added. “We are able to do the prescriptions, and we’re able to do them at much greater powers than you’re able to get at a standard lab,” Lambert said. “If someone is carrying a weapon, it’s pretty important for them to be able to see what they’re shooting at,” he noted.

The company is able to provide eyewear for large numbers of warfighters, fast. “We’ve had some good success in making pre-scription eyewear for the military,” Lambert recalled. “We’ve done it for quite a few years. We were contacted by the 82nd Airborne, and they needed 4,000 pairs of prescription goggles. We had sup-plied them with that. They needed that in 30 days, so we supplied them with some clear [and] smoked lenses for them in the Wiley X [goggle model] SG-1s.”

Heavyglare offers an immense array of protective eyewear from many manufacturers, affording a wide choice to warfight-ers. While some are tried-and-true favorites, others are newer offerings.

“Numa Point is a new product that just came to market a couple of years ago,” he related. “I’m going to be putting that on our GSA schedule as well.” And there are other new offerings. “One of the newest products that we’ve just started selling is an eyewear line called Body Specs, and we’ve just added them to our GSA schedule—the GSA schedule to sell directly to the military, state, federal and local governments as well,” Lambert reported.

Heavyglare eyewear is designed for the realities that warfighters face in theater. “Some of the more popular ones have a foam insert that you can snap in and out of the product, to help with dirt and debris that you’ll get with desert conditions,” he observed. “A lot of them will come with a safety strap to keep them on your head, and a carrying case so when you’re not wearing them, they’ll be protected and not get scratched up when they’re not in use.”

The eyewear that the company offers is popular throughout the military services, Lambert said. “We do sell to all branches of the government, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, they all do purchase from us,” he continued. “We also carry a product called Revision, which is a newer product as well, which offers some of the same properties as the Wiley X or Body Specs products, with milspec standards and safety standards.”

The eye gear that Heavyglare offers is available to military units through the General Services Administration. “Contracts go for five years, so we’re in our second year of a GSA contract,” he explained.

ESS makes authorized protective eyewear for soldiers. Com-munications Specialist Ari Drougas noted these include the Cross-bow eye-shield, an interchangeable one-lens shield system, and the Profile Night Vision Goggle. “We were the first company with a low-profile NVG that fits in the helmet,” he said. The Crossbow was the most widely used model in the Army in 2011 and the only eye-shield used by Marines. It is fitted with anti-microbial foam.

ESS has added military sunglasses that provide the same impact protection as the Crossbow. “Soldiers can use sunglasses when not in combat because they look better but provide the same level of protection,” Drougas said.

The military sets specifications for both eye-shields and goggles, the most important of which are impact standards. “They specify a projectile and speed, and we must prove the lens will not be compromised,” Drougas said. There are also optical standards to ensure clarity and freedom from distortion. After these two requirements are met, services seek comfort and the ability to integrate with other gear soldiers must wear.

Drougas argued that Crossbow is the only true anti-fog spec-tacle. “Others used mixed solutions,” he said. “We spray inside for fog and outside for scratch protection.” The highest level of anti-fog protection is provided by goggles with fans, which ESS provides in its Turbofan series. But these models tend to be used by elite forces, not rank-and-file soldiers.

Drougas sees soldiers moving toward spectacles and away from goggles. Although goggles afford more protection around the edges of eyes, they are uncomfortable and may interfere with peripheral vision.

ESS has developed a new frame for the Crossbow designed to fit with hearing protection and communication equipment. “It is virtually undetectable with a padded seal,” Drougas noted. The aim is to eliminate pain or headaches when eye and hearing protection are worn together.

Revision Military’s entire line of military eye protection is designed to protect and perform on the battlefield, stressed Dan Packard, senior vice president sales for Revision Military.

“The Sawfly Spectacle is ideal for everyday wear and designed to be extremely comfortable for long hours in the field,” Packard said. “It features ultra-thin, adjustable arms for optimal use with hearing protection and communications equipment. Over-molded temples and a soft-grip nose-pad ensure comfort and a stay-put fit.”

Sawfly exceeds U.S. military ballistic impact requirements for spectacles. “Precision manufactured interchangeable lenses ensure distortion-free vision, full side-impact protection and anti-fog performance,” Packard said. “Anti-scratch lenses resist a wide range of chemicals. Lean, extendable arms guarantee comfort, while thinness ensures hearing protection and headsets work as designed.”

Revision’s Desert Locust Goggle provides additional protection against hazards such as sunlight, wind, dust and flying debris. “The Desert Locust provides the widest field-of-view in its class along with high performance anti-fog protection,” Packard said. “Its no-foam frame gasket ensures a comfortable fit and maintains a hygienic, easy-to-clean facial seal.”


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SOTECH_CompromiseElsewhere:Layout 1 11/2/11 7:13 AM Page 1

Desert Locust also exceeds ballistic impact requirements for goggles and ensures distortion-free vision. A low profile ensures compatibility with helmet, binoculars and NVGs, while full-frame ventilation and coated lenses prevent fogging. Its pliable frame seals comfortably to the soldier’s face.

“Both systems provide excellent interoperability with NVGs, weapons optics and thermal-imaging equipment,” Packard noted. “They are both on the U.S. Army Authorized Protective Eyewear List and made 100 percent in the United States.”

The Sawfly Spectacle and Desert Locust Goggle also block harmful ultraviolet rays. “Importantly, each system can be outfit-ted with laser protective lenses to protect against a broad range of battlefield threats,” Packard said.

Revision has a new Exoshield Extreme Low-profile Eyewear System, a single lens system that seals close to the face for excel-lent interoperability with NVGs, optics and thermal imaging. Packard said it is ideal for high-speed mobility, dynamic environ-ments and a broad spectrum of operational needs.

Also new is Revision’s Batlskin Modular Head Protection System, which protects against ballistic, blast and blunt-force trauma. “The Batlskin System comprises an all-new ballistic hel-met shell, trauma liner, front mount, retention system, mandible guard and visor,” Packard said. “It uniquely addresses the sol-dier’s need for a single, integrated head protection system that’s scalable and adaptable.” Batlskin enables soldiers to transform helmets from a standard shell in low-threat environments to a helmet and visor configuration for peacekeeping or a complete helmet, visor and mandible guard system for full-scale combat.

ArmorSource makes helmets for all levels of protection, from the lowest to the highest, according to President Yoav Kapah. It has also made face and eye protection for bomb-disposal units. Depending on the level of protection, this explosive shield adds three to five pounds to helmet weight.

The company has been working with Eye Tactical to provide lightweight protection for eyes and faces against fragmentation and ballistic penetration, integrated with helmets. “This will give the full face protection,” Kapah emphasized.

The composite Lightweight Level IIIA Mask Protection has a 3.4 mm high optical lens. A ballistic pad snaps onto the mask frame for protection, while the assembly weighs only 1.4 to 1.6 pounds. “We have worked hard to reduce weight because weight on the head is much harder to carry than the same weight on the body,” Kapah said.

The mask fits small, medium, large and extra-large Kevlar helmets. An NVG mount mask is pre-notched to accommodate standard NVG mounts. It was developed for combat gunners or other mounted soldiers to offer additional protection against fragmentation and secondary debris caused by IEDs.

“It’s a great breakthrough,” Kapah emphasized. The new model is being supplied to NATO forces and to the U.S. State Department, and Kapah seeks to supply the U.S. Army as well. O

For more information, contact SOTECH Editor Dave Ahearn at [email protected] or search our online archives for related stories at www.SOTECH-kmi.com.


Indispensible Suppressors

When a technology can save warfighters from suffering hearing loss, provide them with greater situational awareness if they encounter enemy sniper fire, and save the Department of Defense hundreds of millions of dollars, it would seem beyond question that the technology would be provided to every combatant.

That is precisely what is happening with suppresors for the multitude of weapons that warriors use every day, a technology that also makes it tougher for bad guys to determine the direction of fire aimed at them by allied troops.

SureFire LLC provides suppressors that don’t impair accuracy of firearms, Ron Can-field, public relations manager, said. The superior performance of the SureFire sup-pressors is a key reason that SOCOM and other armed services have decided to obtain them, he indicated

The Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division—the primary solicitation center for U.S. Special Operations Command—awarded SureFire a $23.3 million contract for an indefinite quantity of sound suppressors, sup-pressor adapters, blank firing adapters and training adapters. The award was part of the family of muzzle brake suppressors contract, following a major suppressor evaluation by the military that focused on criteria including reliability, sound reduction, accuracy, point of impact shift, endurance/durability and opera-tional suitability.

Other services employing SureFire sup-pressors include the Marine Corps, which uses their FA762SS suppressor system on every M40A5 sniper rifle, Canfield observed.

The key to SureFire suppressors, Canfield said, lies in the fast-attach technology that fastens the silencer to the weapon. Some sup-pressors attach with a threaded system, and if the threading isn’t precisely straight, that can mean the suppressor isn’t quite straight, affecting accuracy of each round fired, Can-field noted. The fast-attach system ensures the suppressor is mounted in precisely the same way each time, he added.

When the suppressor is mounted so it is straight, the round can avoid striking baffles,

or wipes, in the silencer. And even if a round does strike a baffle in a SureFire suppres-sor, “it won’t deflect the bullet,” Canfield explained, because of a fail-safe feature that SureFire provides. Net result: The round will continue on to the intended target, instead of being deflected to hit something or someone nearby, such as friendly forces.

Joshua Waldron, CEO of Silencerco, said the goal of providing suppressors for every weapon may be achieved next year, thanks to aggressive moves by DoD leaders to obtain suppressors for rifles departmentwide.

One key reason is that the government is sustaining staggering losses because of warfighters suffering hearing damage caused by the deafening noise of their own firearms that aren’t equipped with suppressors.

“There’s been $700 million or $800 mil-lion a year in VA benefit claims for hear-ing-loss damage—damage to the ear, [or] tinnitus, ringing in the ear,” Waldron noted.

Because that hearing damage is unnec-essary, he said, “Every ground troop should have [a suppressor] on their weapon, for more [reasons] than just hearing protection. But hearing protection, by far—it’ll pay for itself 100 times over.”

Another reason to muffle the sound of a soldier’s weapon as he fires it repeatedly is that the hearing loss caused by firearms lack-ing suppressors also makes post-traumatic stress syndrome more difficult to resolve, Waldron said.

“Post-traumatic stress is heightened if there’s ringing in the ear,” he explained. “These guys are coming back from the war and they’re trying to go through counseling to get back in the everyday life and get rid of their … PTSD. And they’re actually having a harder time doing that, because of the con-stant reminder of ringing in the ear.”

Another approach to the hearing loss problem is to provide hearing protection sys-tems to combatants, and several companies make such systems. They typically involve ear buds, tiny sound system speakers that are worn in the ear canal, blocking out damaging noises such as the report of a warfighters’ weapon, or the deafening drone of a military

vehicle on an hours-long ride toward an objective.

And some systems include micro micro-phones that allow combatants to hear conversations and other noises around them—including the sound of gunfire com-ing from an enemy sniper. Multiple mics can help to pinpoint the direction of the sound.

But Waldron challenged those systems, alleging they don’t work well. “The problem with the buds in the ear … you have no idea of the direction of the sound, because the function of the ear, and the natural design of the ear, is how you’re able to triangulate the sound.”

Without ear buds, Waldron asserted, a soldier can better determine the direction from which enemy gunfire originates. And because of that, he said, many warfighters don’t wear the ear buds they are provided.

“They usually take them right off,” he said, “because they can’t hear—they don’t under-stand their surroundings, their environment. Their situational awareness is completely out the window if those ear buds go in. And the really high-tech [ear buds] have microphones that compress all the sound. Those are even worse, because all of the sound comes in at the same volume. And so you have no idea of the distance or direction of the sound. So, the worst thing that you can do is to wear hearing protection if you’re a soldier.”

Without ear buds, the human ear and brain perform an intricate, instantaneous calculus to locate the origin of noises, he said. “Your brain does something really amazing,” Waldron explained. “And that is, just from experience, it catalogs the sound. You’ll actu-ally be able to understand how far away the shot came from, whether it was 100 yards or 1,000 yards, just because of the echoes from the sonic crack going through the air, all that kind of stuff. A seasoned pro will be able to tell where the bullet’s coming from, and how far it is away, just by listening. So it’s pretty important” to have the ear able to perform its work.

If warfighters choose not to wear ear buds, then the remaining alternative for protecting their hearing is to equip their weapons with

blocking noiSe and flaSH, SilencerS Save warfigHterS’

liveS—and Hearing.by dave aHearn

SotecH editor

[email protected]


suppressors, Waldron indicated. Whatever suppressors cost, he added, that outlay is a tiny fraction of the expense of dealing with hearing loss among thousands of combatants.

That may be something that the Super Committee in Congress will have to weigh as it considers how to make hundreds of bil-lions of dollars of cuts in defense spending: whether a cut in one area will result in far higher spending in another.

At this point, Silencerco doesn’t have a contract with the military, although some special operators—Navy SEALs—are using Silencerco suppressors, Walden said. The company is attempting to ramp up operations so it will be able to bid for military contracts, in addition to the work it is doing now to provide suppressors for government and law enforcement weapons.

“Right now, we’re a brand-new com-pany,” he explained. “We actually formed our company in 2008, and so we have several government agencies using our suppressors. But we really haven’t gotten into the military. As of now, we’ve sent some [suppressors] to the SEALs. But that’s as far as we’ve gone. Basically, what’s happening is we started our company with a certain product to get recog-nition and to get clout, and we’ve been able to expand very quickly. And we haven’t actually been able to start going after those military contracts yet, because we’ve been up to a year backlogged in just providing for civilian, law enforcement and government agencies. We haven’t stepped over that threshold yet, to be able to ramp up for” military contracts. “But we’ve geared our company up to where we can start to do that very soon, and get some of those [military] contracts. We’ve been heavily developing our products for the military, and we’re going to be pushing into that field very soon.”

Waldron also said Silencerco suppressors handle gases from a bullet very well, slowing them down to the point where the bullet leaves the weapon before the gases. He also said slowing down gases means that if you are firing your weapon while in the prone position, there is no problem with gases from the shots kicking up dust and betraying your position to the enemy.

SmitH enterPriSe

Smith Enterprise makes suppressors that are different, John Bainer, federal sup-port coordinator, said. The Enterprise Vortex Flash Eliminator suppressor is “100 percent maintainable by the individual soldier,” he

noted. A special operator can disassemble the suppressor, clean it and reassemble it, he said. In contrast, the typical suppressor is welded permanently together, so it can’t be cleaned and carbon builds up inside—caus-ing the sound of the weapon firing to become progressively louder.

Another positive is that in the rare instance when a Smith Enterprise suppres-sor has a problem, there is no need to send it back to the factory and wait for a replace-ment silencer to be shipped back to the mili-tary unit at half price, Bainer said. Rather, he stressed, if there is a problem, Smith will ship a rebuild kit to the unit at one-third the price of a silencer. And even that rarely happens. A unit using Smith Enterprise sup-pressors was in theater in Afghanistan “for a whole year, and we never got one back,” Bainer recalled.

Smith suppressors are mounted on the M4, M14, M16, the .240 machine gun, the M249 machine gun, the .30 caliber and other weapons, Bainer said. They also are in use by the Army and Navy. For example, Smith Enterprise recently was tapped to pro-vide suppressors for special operators. Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center announced an award to Smith Enterprise of a contract for the patented Vortex Flash Eliminator. This will be a five-year, $1.5 million contract. That award came after the silencer was rated the number one suppressor in a developmental test report, according to Smith Enterprise. Crane is the testing and contracting division for the U.S. Special Operations Command.

The rigid testing performed by Crane showed that the Vortex Eliminator was supe-rior to other models, easily passing the 95 percent flash reduction threshold through 10,000 rounds of machine gun fire, a feat extremely difficult to duplicate, according to Smith Enterprise. During the extensive level of examination the Vortex was also proven to not interfere with normal combat functions, alter weapon firing or cycling, or inter-fere with mechanical sight. Hazard analysis, visual flash analysis, hardness testing, drop testing, vibration testing, rust resistance testing and measurement testing were also conducted, and Smith Enterprise suppres-sors passed all standards, Bainer noted. The Vortex is the only flash hider with a helical flute design that breaks up the flash at mul-tiple locations and angles in the suppressor. This contrasts with the straight flute design used by other manufacturers and allows the Vortex to reduce more flash, making troops safer in combat situations, he said.

QuickSilver manufacturing

Quality shows when a product lasts year after year. That is the basic tenet for Quicksilver Manufacturing LLC, where Jay J. Quilligan, M.D., is the managing member. Quicksilver suppressors are being tested by special operators and other warriors.

Quilligan explained why that outlook makes Quicksilver suppressors singular gear for warfighters: Better materials yield longer life for a suppressor. “We were the first com-pany to start using titanium alloy in the regu-lar production of rifle suppressors,” he said. “Our first 5.56 [mm] suppressors came out in 2002. In fact some of these units I personally know are still in service, and at least one I know of has 100,000 rounds through it.”

Titanium also yields weight savings, he said. “The use of titanium has made these suppressors ultra light and long-lasting,” he explained. “The standard 5.56 unit weighs just 9.6 ounces and adds only 7.5 ounces when the flash hider is removed.”

Quicksilver as well sees superior quality in a screw-on mount. But some users want the convenience and speed of a different mount.

“We have always felt that the screw-on mount is more stable and accurate for the suppressor, and time has borne this out,” Quilligan said. But the customer must be heard. “We have, however, bowed to military and law enforcement pressure and recently released a quick-attach version that mounts directly to the A-2 birdcage flash suppressor,” he continued. “That has undergone extensive military testing and is currently being tested by special forces. It has been field tested by government also and the initial feedback was extremely positive, although they’ve not yet sent their written evaluation.”

Other Quicksilver suppressors too, are doing well in tests. “We have also recently had military field testing on our 338 magnum suppressor mounted on the 338 Extreme rifle,” he added. “Early reports are that it was extremely effective in reducing noise and that there was no muzzle flash detected.”

In other testing, “We have … recently submitted for special forces testing a thread mount suppressor for the M240 machine gun and hope to hear results shortly.” O

For more information, contact SOTECH Editor Dave Ahearn at [email protected] or search our online archives for

related stories at www.SOTECH-kmi.com.


in CombatThe Cloud

military it innovation driven by young e-generation warfigHterS.

Today’s cloud computing trend has the potential to enable new mis-sion capabilities for special opera-tions forces while optimizing the costs of acquiring, inserting and sus-taining information technology.

Cloud computing enables soft-ware as a service, where software applications are accessed via the internet/intranet, platform as a ser-vice (PaaS), where applications are developed and provisioned via a web-enabled application platform, and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), where infrastructure resources are accessed and provided over the Inter-net.

In addition, cloud-enabled ana-lytic frameworks are being aggres-sively adopted for new insights from new sources of information.

The convergence of social com-puting, mobile technologies and cloud computing is clashing with enterprise objectives around security, oversight, policy and governance. Caught in the middle are end-users and warfighters, who want consumer technologies with support of the enterprise behind them.

According to the 2011 Army Posture Statement, “The ability for deploying units to access the same battle space awareness information as their deployed counterparts sig-nificantly increases pre-deployment readiness by providing current intel-ligence products in support of pre-deployment training and operational planning. The Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A) has

incorporated cutting edge technol-ogy in the form of cloud comput-ing and advance analytics to provide users with precision search, increased computing speed, enhanced collabo-ration, and data aggregation tools ... The first tactical cloud was deployed to Afghanistan in November 2010 and became operational in March 2011, followed by the CX-I coalition cloud in May 2011. This implementa-tion is the Army’s response to a the-ater Joint Urgent Operational Needs Statement (JUONS) for advanced analytics.”

The cloud is already in combat theaters. What new capabilities does it offer?

cloud at tHe tactical edge

Possibilities of cloud computing and cloud-mobile convergence:

Capability extension: Cloud-to-the-edge enables enterprise capabili-ties to be extended to the operational edge by re-architecting and extend-ing mission threads and processes such that they can be executed by ultra-mobile technologies, smart-phones, tablets and other devices, yet enable very rich mission capabilities to be developed for the edge users. This could include controlling a UAV via a smartphone, or, having map, radio and GPS capabilities all in one small pocket-sized device.

Analytics at the edge: Cloud com-puting is an important enabler of ‘big data’ analytics focusing on semi-structured and unstructured data

from new sensors and new sources of information. Moving analytics to the edge offers a real possibility to improve tactical operations through rapid analysis of threat information, situational awareness, and command and control.

Infrastructure at the edge: Many cloud computing efforts focus on IaaS, which includes compute, stor-age and network resources being provided and accessed via a cloud-enabled resource pool. Infrastructure at the edge is not that new, given the ideas of data centers in a container, computing PODs, and other portable units of infrastructure that can be deployed in situations such as disas-ter relief, for edge operations. Add-ing cloud computing functionality to these portable data centers sim-ply means that more consumers can access the cloud resources when they need them, and therefore support more computing needs with fewer physical resources.

Tactical App Stores: Apple’s iStore application store model is cov-eted by commercial organizations and federal agencies that see the tremendous benefit of allowing users to access and download applications, mission services, widgets and other end-user capabilities from a catalog, all via wireless or tethered networks, and doing so rapidly and efficiently.

Many DoD vendors have already begun to develop and field mobile tactical apps and some have even announced plans to open apps stores for military customers. In addition,

by eric markS


the military is developing apps of its own. With today’s computer-savvy warriors, we may find that the ultimate end-user community is quite capable of actively participating in or even being the leading voice in tactical apps development.

A recent example of this type of grass roots adaptation of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology to solve a mili-tary problem is the adoption of iPads by some units of the Marine Corps aviation community to carry charts electronically rather that stuffing reams of paper charts into cramped cockpits.

It is not uncommon for warriors to make after action reports by speaking into their smartphones using the built-in voice recognition apps, then emailing the transcribed report to their computer. Result: much saved time, faster reports, less administrative burden on warriors, all thanks to COTS technology.

Combine all these apps with C2 apps at the edge and now we start to realize the long-sought vision of the COP, the common operational picture: each pilot, dismounted soldier, vehicle, command post, etc. all sharing real-time accurate situational awareness data.

We must understand, however, that app stores have cloud computing PaaS underpinnings, which do take time to implement, but once in place, they enable the capabilities to transform C2 at the edge.

Cloud-Mobile Fusion for Tactical Operations: The convergence of cloud computing and mobile technologies will create a new palette of opportunities to rethink mission capabilities from an architectural and data delivery perspec-tive, and begin to explicitly build the tactical edge user experience into these architectures, and build new mission capabilities from the edge into the enter-prise, or architected outside-in, from the edge to the enterprise.

Clouds and Wireless Grids: The rapid ascent of cloud computing has taken some of the thunder from the grid comput-ing industry. However, combining these two capacities with wireless networking enables the concept of wireless clouds, which essentially means adding elements of cloud computing to wireless grids.

While this technology is still fairly emergent, the possibilities are intriguing and allow us to envision the art of the possible if a grid of linked computers can

discover one another, connect, pool their resources, and allow sharing of compu-tation to address spikes in demand for computational capacity in tactical situa-tions. There are not specific use cases or CONOPs for this model, but then again, nobody asked for the telephone either.

obStacleS

While there are many possibilities for cloud computing and cloud-mobile convergence focused on the tactical edge community, there are also real barriers that will continue to inhibit these tech-nology trends. The three biggest obstacles to cloud computing and cloud-mobile convergence at the tactical edge are band-width, latency and intermittency of con-nection.

First, there are significant network bandwidth challenges at the edge, which are being addressed by new network tech-nologies and innovations. We’ll have to deal with those constraints for some time. As for intermittency, mobile cloud applications will have to be built to func-tion despite losing network connections momentarily. While this is a current chal-lenge, it can be addressed in part through innovations such as HTML 5, which enables data caching for mobile platforms and allows a cloud-mobile application to continue to function despite intermittent loss of connection.

Application design for the cloud-mobile convergence will have to be spe-cifically architected from the edge back to the enterprise, and thus the DIL con-straints can be better accommodated by mobile edge applications.

New technology innovations, such as 4G/LTE mobile services, offer far greater capacity for data and voice requirements, as well as low network latency, plug and play support, and provide support for both frequency division multiplexing and time division duplexing on the same platform.

next StePS

As the infrastructure and network technologies evolve, and as enterprises continue to embrace the trend toward increasing mobility and knowledge worker portability, the demand for edge-centric, cloud-enabled mobile-oriented mission capabilities will dramatically increase.

The following actions are recom-mended:

Leverage the cloud: Begin to struc-ture experimentation activities oriented toward pushing cloud computing capa-bilities as close to the edge as possible.

Innovate for cloud-mobile fusion: This is today’s reality, and the opportunity to innovate at the intersection of cloud computing and mobile technology is ripe. The tactical operations community lives at this intersection, and should be the driver and innovation engine for cloud-mobile fusion.

Listen to the users: Many of the innovations in mobile apps and the tacti-cal cloud will come from the men and women in the field at the very edge. The days of all great things trickling down are long in the past. The younger generation of warriors has been raised from birth in a connected world and they likely ‘get it’ much more readily than people who were raised in the age of landlines. Our future generation of warfighters will come from the age of mobile computing, app stores, text messaging and related technologies.

Design applications from the edge into the enterprise: We must begin to design applications for cloud and cloud-mobile fusion, such that tactical needs are architected early into mission capabil-ities, and are not bolt-ons once the enter-prise requirements have been satisfied.

Cloud computing and mobile-cloud convergence are the forces of innova-tion that we will be living with for the next decade. This is our new reality. Technology development processes and acquisition models will have to embrace the reality that if a capability cannot be accessed, delivered and leveraged to drive productivity within a five minute end-user experience, it will be too late. This is particularly true at the tactical edge. This is our opportunity to drive accelerated technology insertion using real world consumer technologies. O

Eric Marks is president and CEO of AgilePath Corp., a vendor-independent management consulting firm based in Newburyport, Mass.

For more information, contact SOTECH Editor Dave Ahearn at [email protected] or search our online archives for

related stories at www.SOTECH-kmi.com.


Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

Timed Release Handcuffs Give

Special Operators an Option

The Special Timer Activated Restraint and Release System (STARRS) was developed to give special operators another choice when confronted with indigenous personnel while conducting special reconnaissance or other missions that require a small team in isolated terrain.

STARRS was developed as a joint project between the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office and United States Special Operations Command Science and Technology and is manufactured by Time Cuffs LLC of North Charleston, S.C. The technology provides military personnel with a way to restrain an individual by using standard flex-cuffs, and allows that person to be freed after a certain amount of time.

Before STARRS, a compromised team only had two choices. One was to kill the person that compromised them (and further risk compro-mise when the person doesn’t return to his awaiting family; or face trial for murder when they return to the U.S.) The second option was to allow the person to go free and hope that they do not alert enemy forces before the team has evacuated the area ahead of enemy forces arriving. Operation Redwing is an example of when a team chose the second option, and 19 SOF personnel died as a result.

By restraining the person with STARRS, the team can feel confident that they can evacuate the area without the enemy being notified and preserve the life of the individual that is restrained. The STARRS is employed by simply slipping it onto any standard set of flex-cuffs and setting the time for a predetermined interval between one to eight hours. Once the STARRS is set, it cannot be deactivated, and it will cut the flex-cuffs after the time has run out. The device cannot be used again, and the internal components cannot be reused by the enemy. The systems are currently in an evaluation phase with U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Marine Corps Special Operations Command, the Naval Special Warfare Command, the intel-ligence community, and several federal law enforcement agencies.

Innovation Helps Warfighters Zero Thermal Weapon Sights

Infrared Tools has developed the CaTTIS (Calibration Target for Thermal Infrared Sights) to help soldiers zero their thermal weapon sights accurately, easily, and inexpensively.

The target design is based on feedback from soldiers and Army program management. The target accuracy is achieved by using thermal infrared tape to shield all but a small portion of a heater, resulting in a well-defined point of aim.

Many field expedient zeroing methods result in a large, poorly defined point of aim.

The target is easy to use because it functions exactly like a zero target used with iron sights and the target is completely self-contained. It is inexpensive because of economies of scale not achievable when using field expedient methods. CaTTIS is available on GSA schedule GS-07-F-0664W and via company distribution.

Firms to Collaborate in Developing Counter-IED System

MBDA Italia—jointly held by BAE Systems, EADS and Finmeccanica—will team with Niitek, a unit of Chemring Group Plc, to develop and produce a counter-IED system. They will develop and produce a pushed decoys trailer based upon Niitek and MBDA-IT expertise in the field of C-IED and countermining systems.

MBDA Italia has selected Niitek as the supplier of the ground penetrating radar to be integrated onto MBDA’s Calife 3 pushed decoy vehicle. The parties intend to jointly collabo-rate in marketing the integrated product to the Italian Ministry of Defence and to other selected countries. Both companies believe this integrated collaboration will result in the supply of a major capability upgrade to the various military units involved in field opera-tional activities.

Forced Entry, EOD Systems LaunchedChemring EOD launched two new

products, for forced entry and EOD. FRED (force rapid entry device) is an

easy-to-use, securely coded, RF channel selectable firing system. It can be used in explosive method of entry, explosive ordnance disposal and other electro-explo-sive device applications, for either wire or nonel shock tube initiation. Units are lightweight, easily transportable due to their small size, and are powered by stan-dard off-the-shelf batteries, according to the company.

TED (timed exploder device) is a low-cost, timer-based disposable initiator with an integrated display and keypad enabling the operator to program a required time

delay before initiation. This can be either ahead of time or at the point of use. Once it has been programmed and on-target by the operator, it is impossible to re-program the device. This battery powered initiator can detonate an explosive charge at any time from 1 minute to 30 days from the moment of initialization.

Paul Taylor, Chemring EOD sales and marketing director, commented, “Our customers recognize the importance of easy-to-use and reliable initiation systems. We are therefore delighted to be releasing two new products, which meet our customer requirements and can be effectively used in a variety of applications.”


DARPA to Obtain New Language Translation Technology

DARPA has awarded Language Weaver a $3.2 million contract to devise innovative language translation technology that would represent a revolutionary leap forward in the area, rather than evolutionary improvements.

The Human Language Technology research and development program called Broad Operational Language Translation would aid warfighters in areas as far flung as the Middle East and China.

The company will investigate innovative approaches that will enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems, not merely research that primarily results in evolu-tionary improvements to the existing state of practice. This would result in technology that can provide:

• Translation of multiple foreign languages in all genres, retrieving information from the translated material, enabling bilingual communication via speech or text

• Accurate translation into English of all language genres, including informal speech and text such as occurs in email, messaging and conversational speech in Arabic (including a variety of dialects

such as Levantine or Iraqi) and Mandarin Chinese

• Capability for human-machine communication by voice in English and Arabic using multi-modal input for robotic control or desktop applications and multi-turn, bilingual human-human conversation in speech or text, including a monolingual human-machine dialogue in both languages for clarification and disambiguation

• Capability to retrieve targeted information from multi-lingual sources using natural language English queries with human-machine clarification and disambiguation dialogue and means to annotate documents (textual or spoken) for fast comprehensive search

• Research in deep semantic language acquisition using robotic visual and tactile information as input for experiential learning of objects, actions and consequences

• Research in basic technologies such as parsing, semantic role labeling, language modeling, etc. that is essential to the success of the above.

Radiation Detector Introduced

FLIR Systems announced the introduction of the latest in handheld radiation detection technology. The nanoRaider spectroscopic personal radiation detector (SPRD) is a pager-sized device with full detection and identification capabilities. The nano-Raider provides the highest detector resolution available in a pager-sized device with sensitivity and identification capabilities not previously available in an SPRD.

The nanoRaider uses the same easy to navigate interface customers have come to know from the identiFINDER as well as One Touch Reachback capability for immediate reporting. By incorpo-rating identification capabilities, the nanoRaider can virtually eliminate the false alarm and false positives that are common to non-identifying pagers.

“Ease of use is a key component in all FLIR handheld radiation moni-tors,” said Bill Sundermeier, president of FLIR Government Systems. “With the nanoRaider, FLIR has enabled precise identification capabilities never before seen in a spectroscopic pager.”

Smart Radio IntroducedHarris Corp. introduced the

RF-7800S-LR Leader Radio, a soldier smart radio that features embedded GPS, encryption and a personal digital assistant (PDA). The RF-7800S-LR provides unit leaders with combat-proven tactical communication and computing capabilities in a single, lightweight device for enhanced mission flexibility, according to the company.

The Harris RF-7800S-LR combines a tactical radio with built-in computer to deliver voice, wideband data and networking and supporting applications such

as mapping tools, messaging and video transmission. These capabili-ties allow deployed warfighters and their leaders to send and receive information critical to situational awareness, including collection and streaming of full motion video.

The Leader Radio offers a variety of input/output options to connect to external devices, and serves as the core of the Harris FalconFighter—a modular soldier system that seamlessly integrates C4 devices, sensors, networking components and power modules.

“The Leader Radio provides commanders more capabilities in

a smaller and lighter radio, while maintaining the impressive range offered by the RF-7800S team radio,” said Andy Start, president, international business, Harris RF Communications. “With the RF-7800S-LR, commanders are connected to every member of their team via secure, digitized voice and data communications. By combining various technologies into a single device, the RF-7800S-LR dramatically reduces the soldier’s load. It is the smallest, lightest and most integrated soldier communi-cation and computing device avail-able on the market today.”

The Leader Radio is a modular upgrade to the Team Radio. The embedded PDA allows soldiers to remove excess cabling, batteries and weight. The Leader Radio is software-defined, positioning the radio to address emerging require-ments through updates. Likewise, FalconFighter is uniquely designed to accommodate products with open standards and interfaces—making it easier for users to customize the system to their needs. The Leader Radio can be purchased as part of the FalconFighter system or as a standalone product based on the needs of the mission.


Colonel James “Jay” Wolff, a native of the Chicago, Ill. area, attended Western Illinois University where he was commissioned in 1987 as a military police officer in the U.S. Army. As a mili-tary police officer, Wolff served as a platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) during Operation Desert Storm/Desert Shield and later commanded the 272nd Military Police Company in the 95th Military Police Battalion.

After receiving civil affairs training, Wolff was assigned to the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne) in 1996, where he served as a civil affairs team leader, company operations officer, Delta Company commander and battalion executive officer.

After graduating from the Command and General Staff Col-lege at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., in 2001, Wolff served as an Army congressional fellow for Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas as his foreign relations and national security advisor. He later served in the office of the chief of legislative liaison and was subsequently reassigned to the office of the secretary of defense during Opera-tion Iraqi Freedom.

In 2003, Wolff deployed to Iraq as the chief of operations for the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, South-ern Region and then served as the chief of civil administration for the Coalition Provisional Authority, South-Central Region.

Wolff returned to Fort Bragg in 2004 to assume command of the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne) from June 2004 through June 2006. With the expansion of the civil affairs mission in the regular Army, Wolff also commanded the 95th Civil Affairs Brigade (Airborne) as it was being organized in a provisional sta-tus and later served as the brigade’s deputy commanding officer.

Wolff then attended the National War College at Fort McNair, followed by an assignment to the U. S. Special Operations Com-mand with duty at the United States Agency for International Development.

Wolff’s civilian education includes a B.S. in law enforcement administration from Western Illinois University, Macomb, Ill., an M.S. in national security affairs from the Naval Post Graduate School, Monterey, Calif., and an M.S. in national security strategy from the National War College, Washington., D.C.

His military decorations include the Legion of Merit, Soldier’s Medal, Bronze Star Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal,

Meritorious Service Medal, Ranger Tab, Combat Action Badge, Master Parachutist Badge and Air Assault Badge.

Q: After roughly five years since the 95th was formed, what have been your chief accomplishments?

A: Since this brigade entered Carrier Status on March 16, 2006, it has remained continuously deployed across the globe. The ability to “build the airplane in flight,” while consistently improving the capability and capacity of our deploying elements, has been the main accomplishment. Over the past five-and-a-half years, this brigade has split battalions three times and built our fifth bat-talion. We have grown from a single battalion of 409 soldiers to a brigade with five regionally oriented battalions with 1,302 person-nel, growing to an end-strength of 1,822 on October 16, 2014. Our chief accomplishments have been mission success across all of our diverse mission sets, growing the force exponentially, and doing this all while taking care of our soldiers, civilians and families.

Q: What are your chief challenges remaining?

A: The growth of the brigade will remain our main challenge. Over the next three years, we will build five more companies and

Colonel Jay WolffCommander

95th Civil Affairs Brigade (Airborne)


95th Civil Affairs Builds Trust in Combat Zones and Disaster Areas Alike

Growth Leader Q&AQ&A

an additional 30 civil affairs [CA] teams, adding an additional CA team to each company. We will grow significant capacity at the battalion and brigade level as we increase our operational and strategic capabilities. This growth will place a significant strain on our NCOs and officers, especially when combined with the growth of active component civil affairs units and staff elements within the Department of Defense.

Q: What do you see as the trend in growth for civil affairs, both in terms of the number of units, and in personnel end strength, over the next five years?

A: The main trends are growth and an increase in the capability/capacity of the civil affairs force. In 2006, the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion [Airborne], with 409 personnel, was responsible for conducting SOF mission sets and was also the Army’s civil affairs contingency force. The activation of the 85th Civil Affairs Brigade and the 81st Civil Affairs Battalion removes us from the Army contingency mission requirements and allows us to focus on our SOF civil affairs missions. The 85th Civil Affairs Brigade will activate four additional regional battalions at four different installations over the next two years. At end state in 2014, the active component civil affairs community will have grown by over 3,200 soldiers.

Q: How satisfied are you with the level of language and culture skills among the personnel in your command?

A: Based upon our rapid growth and exceptionally high OPTEMPO, we are doing better than expected. Iraq and Afghani-stan have had a real impact on the ability to develop the language and cultural skills expected of this brigade. At one point, this brigade was at a 1-0.5 dwell ratio, one day deployed for every half day back at Fort Bragg. Out-of-theater deployments for our regional battalions have been common, and current CENTCOM requirements still far exceed what one battalion can accomplish. However, our average dwell is now above a 1-1 [ratio], and we have been investing heavily in language, regional expertise and culture [LREC] capabilities and capacities. The USAJFKSWCS [U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School] has established the Directorate of Regional Studies and Educa-tion, and we are taking advantage of their programs to continu-ally improve our ability to communicate in the missions’ target languages, while improving our cultural understanding of the areas we operate within.

Q: As you work with regional and local governments, how long does it typically take to develop a working relationship that less-ens hostility toward or improves attitudes toward U.S. forces?

A: Every mission is different. It is much easier when we are working in areas that do not have a large U.S. military footprint. Regardless of where we are operating, one of our first critical tasks is to understand the social dynamics and instability fac-tors within an area. It takes time to develop the relationships required to understand the social fabric of an area and to gain the trust of local leadership and key communicators.

Q: Could you please tell us about experiences that the 95th has

seen that provided lessons learned, and changed the way you approach missions?

A: We continually re-learn the requirement to have a civil informa-tion management system. But with the USSOCOM Civil Informa-tion Management Data Processing System [CIMDPS] program of record, we are finally moving forward on the global system required to establish baselines and measure our effects in high priority areas. The nascent capability has allowed us to approach our missions more holistically through reach-back and conducting “left of RIP/TOA” [relief in place, transfer of authority] preparation, where ele-ments preparing to deploy are an asset to the deployed element through research, analysis and product development. CIMDPS provides a single standard for sharing information with other SOF, to refine a commander’s common operational picture, and dra-matically increases our ability to coordinate with our interagency partners.

Q: In a typical mission, what role does the Department of State play? And what role do governmental and non-governmental agen-cies play?

A: The Department of State plays a leading role, and our operations out of U.S. embassies are nested under the Ambassador’s Mission Strategic Resource Plan [MSRP]. To ensure unity of effort, we coor-dinate very closely with the country team and extend the reach of U.S. programs into the theater special operations command [TSOC] areas of interest for mutual benefits. Operations are always planned and executed with intent to achieve TSOC and MSRP objectives under CONPLAN 7500 LOOs [lines of operation] and the Foreign Assistance Framework.

We work with non-governmental agencies in most mission sets. Many of these organizations have been working in these areas for years and are better suited to address many issues. In some cases, we work closely with them while in others we avoid contact to protect their impartiality.

Q: Can you describe for us an instance where a unit under the 95th Civil Affairs Brigade [Airborne] entered an area where terrorists were active, and through assistance to the local government and population saw the terrorists decline in numbers and influence?

A: Our main mission under the CONPLAN 7500 construct is to shape the environment by engaging threats to indig-enous populations in order to reduce, mitigate, and over time eliminate identified civil vulnerabilities to make an area inhospi-table to violent extremist organizations [VEOs]. We have demon-strated success in multiple mission sets. This happens regularly in the conduct of village stability operations in Afghanistan with partnered SOF. Outside of Afghanistan, we had a recent case where our work with the country team, partner nation, local security forces and local government resulted in a 90 percent reduction of illicit activity in a key node. This disruption of the network allowed the partner nation to make significant progress in security, development and governance.

Q: What would you most like to have for your personnel, such as a new language training system, or communications sys-tems?


A: The most criti-cal requirement is the USSOCOM CIMDPS program of record. The ability to geospatially depict the human and physical infrastructure of an area is critical to gaining an understand-ing of the operational environment and sup-porting the command-er’s decision-making and assessment process. These data sets provide a baseline for under-standing and for shar-ing that understanding with other stakeholders. It enables reach-back and coordination with the governance and development experts in the State Department and USAID. It provides the ability to apply sta-bility frameworks and analytics to increase effectiveness. It enables the intricacies of the civil domain to be incorporated in pro-grams and into a commander’s common operational picture. It provides the ability to drill down into local areas to apply resources for strategic effect. We need this global system in order to synchronize efforts within SOF, within the interagency, with partner nations, and with other stakeholders.

Q: Congress is considering billions of dollars in defense cuts. What efficiency or cost-cutting initiatives have you instituted thus far?

A: We continue to decrease our reliance on contracted training. There are some things that are more efficient to contract based on the required equipment, resources and level of expertise. But there were other contracts that we were using because we did not have the resident expertise, the time to train ourselves, or the required institutional resources. We review every contract and add a “train the trainer” portion to the training so we can transition based on the growth of the brigade. Over the past year, we have reduced our contracts by over 50 percent through a very deliberate transition process. We work very closely with the USAJFKSWCS to transition some training requirements into new courses, leveraging their expertise. We also have a great group of soldiers and civilians working in our resource manage-ment section that have significantly improved the timeliness of our resourcing functions to eliminate financial transaction penalties.

Q: Do you expect impending authorization and/or appropria-tions reductions to affect the 95th? In what ways?

A: We have always worked in a resource-constrained envi-ronment and understand we need to carefully prioritize our requirements. We do not see an impact on the final pro-grammed growth and will continue to prioritize within the resources provided. My biggest concern is really on how pos-sible reductions may affect our families. We will figure out how to do what is required within the brigade with the resources provided; however, any cuts that affect the family programs will be extremely difficult on this unit and the military writ large.

Q: Approximately what percentage of civil affairs personnel are deployed in theater in Afghanistan and Iraq, and what percentage are deployed elsewhere? And how often are civil affairs personnel deploying, versus how much dwell time and reset opportunity they receive?

A: We have a persistent presence in 19 countries today and expect this will grow to 24 in fiscal 2012. Roughly 50 percent of our deployed forces conduct operations in Iraq and Afghani-stan. The growth of nine companies and the activation of the 92nd Civil Affairs Battalion [Airborne] on October 14, 2011, have had a very positive effect on our OPTEMPO. It will take several months but, based on known requirements, we project being able to sustain an average of roughly one day deployed to 1.4 days at home station over the next three years. To be honest, the majority of our soldiers would prefer it at a roughly 1-1.5 ratio—eight months deployed, 12 months back. It takes deployed time to develop the required sub-regional linguistic and cultural capability that USSOCOM expects from its person-nel.

U.S. forces interact with local population. [Photo coutesy of DoD]


Q: What disaster relief and humanitarian efforts have civil affairs personnel participated in, and what is their role in those efforts?

A: Recent efforts include Indonesia, Haiti, Colombia and Pakistan. Our roles vary from immediate life saving to coordination/facilita-tion. Our SOF civil affairs teams are the only elements in the Army that have a 38BW4—a civil affairs medical NCO that is also trained as a Special Operations Command medic with an additional eight weeks of public health training through the Civil Affairs Medical Sergeant Course. As a first responder, a SOF CA team can conduct immediate life-saving efforts and then conduct civil reconnais-sance to assist in prioritization of the relief effort. We have the ability to provide force structure, when required, at civil-military coordination nodes. This is where the ability to geospatially depict conditions becomes critical to assist in establishing priorities for resources and delivery methodologies. We have also served as liai-sons to the U.N. cluster systems to collect, collate and post current data to facilitate coordination and collaboration between multiple stakeholders. Our roles vary based upon the size of the response and the niche capabilities required. In Haiti, 52 soldiers from the battalion and brigade responded based upon the magnitude of the disaster. SOF CA teams already in Indonesia, Colombia and Paki-stan assisted without additional force structure being deployed.

Q: Do you have any parting thoughts as to your command, the role of civil affairs and your personnel who help to lessen the threat to the United States and its military forces?

A: The 95th Civil Affairs Brigade [Airborne] will continue to build the capability and capacity that USSOCOM requires. It is impor-tant to understand that while we have been a part of USSOCOM from the beginning, the Army did not establish the Civil Affairs Branch for our officers or the 38B Military Occupational Spe-cialty for our NCOs until October 16, 2006. As we approach our fifth anniversary, we have made remarkable progress in maturing our SOF civil affairs soldiers and organizational structures. The maturation has been made possible through increased quality in recruiting by the Special Operations Recruiting Battalion; the attributes screening process prior to entering the USAJFKSWCS Civil Affairs Qualification Course [CAQC]; the increased quality of content, instruction and focus on core SOF attributes in the CAQC; and most importantly, the quality of the outstanding group of talented soldiers and civilians within this brigade that I am privileged to work with. Every single day, we are conducting operations under each of the TSOCs to reduce, mitigate and over time eliminate identified civil vulnerabilities that are exploited by VEOs. O


It’s a war movie cliché that has been repeated in film after film for decades: A group of soldiers is pinned down by enemy gunfire and the radio operator calls in air support, providing coordinates over the radio for aircraft to fly over and take out.

That’s a scenario that once might have been the only means of getting air support, but a host of the latest digital mobile communi-cation equipment allows today’s warfighter to send everything from coordinate-embedded video of a threat to precise position information derived from an enemy’s own communications in near real time.

This can easily be accomplished with the touch of a button from vehicle-mounted terminals, tablet computers and even smartphones that take advantage of latest-generation higher bandwidth, secure military wireless systems. While wireless communication system inte-gration with legacy radio and satellite systems remains a significant issue as the U.S. military attempts to solve equipment interoperability problems on the battlefield, such technology is becoming an increas-ingly critical part of the sharing intelligence in theater, providing special operations ground units and air support teams a once unthink-able strategic advantage in situational awareness and targeting for the sort of counterinsurgency, high-value target and other operations that dominate contemporary asymmetric warfare.

Logen Thiran, president of the Intelligence, Communications and Avionics Solutions division of Parsippany, N.J.-based DRS Technologies Inc., told Special Operations Technology that there is an unavoidable correlation between communications equipment and intelligence that is all aimed at one goal: ensuring threats are targeted and eliminated with a growing level of assuredness and sophistication.

“What [the warfighters] are looking for is verification before they take action,” said Thiran. “Communications and intel are an integral part of one another in terms of solving this problem.”

Small radio, big Power

AR Modular RF’s AR50 tactical amplifier is one of the smallest and most versatile VHF/UHF amplifiers on the market, offering high power 50W output for both line-of-sight (LOS) and UHF SATCOM communications, with switchable low noise amplifier in a package that can be used in both 24 volt military and 12 volt civilian vehicles or run from a battery.

The unit is designed to be used with handheld radios like the PRC-152 or MBITR PRC 148, as well as traditional “backpack” radios like the PSC5-D or PRC-117F/G. The 20 Watt KMW1031 provides a

simple (no operator controls) backpackable unit to extend the range of communications for operators with low power handheld radios once they leave their vehicles, or to give improved penetration within dense urban environments where LOS communication ranges often fall down to just a few blocks with a normal handheld radio.

It comes with a built-in power supply that can deal with both mili-tary and civilian vehicle supplies or run off one battery.

L-3 Interstate Electronics Corp., a San Diego and Anaheim, Calif.-based division of L-3 Communications, is a provider of full motion video RSTA (reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition) and ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) systems for the U.S. military. Its latest offering is the VideoScout system, a software-based proprietary system designed to retrieve, disseminate and archive full motion video or infrared sensor data.

Currently used by the Marine Corps in theater, the company recently expanded the mounted and unmounted systems to run on Android smartphones. The family of products includes a network system, laptop and tablet versions. While each provides for robust use, the richness of features does decline the smaller and more portable the unit. Nevertheless, the system not only disseminates video and other sensor information with two-way transmission between the field users and command center, it also can send still images and audio clips along with user notations. It also includes metadata and GPS-based geolocation mapping over moving images that can be used to support targeting and close air support for teams on the ground, including by UAVs while supporting Department of Defense collection tools like the Tactical Ground Reporting System (TIGR) database.

Nicholas Ortyl, vice president and general manager of L-3 IEC’s San Diego-based situational awareness business unit, told SOTECH that the interoperable system is in use on the ground in Afghanistan and adaptable across wireless communication platforms from Wi-Fi and mesh networks to military satellite and commercial cellular data systems, adapting to the bandwidth specifics of each that is secured with AES software encryption.

“There is technology built into all the platforms and all the soft-ware so it will appropriately throttle and compress the data so you don’t have any [streaming] issues,” said Ortyl. “If you said ‘What hap-pens when you put 40 users on the system?’ we have algorithms and other technologies to manage all that so you don’t get into this situa-tion where you overload the system.”

In terms of the future applications, Ortyl noted that the firm is exploring capabilities for submarines and adopting it with the help

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of integrators for incorporation into MRAPs or other ground vehicle retrofit efforts, potentially by combining it with other systems into a single video platform. He added that special forces community interest is particular high, such as for mounting on ATVs and other vehicles.

With close to 2,000 in use on the ground in Afghanistan, Ortyl noted that VideoScout had its genesis with special forces and the intel-ligence community a few years ago.

“We are getting a very nice pull in that direction because our roots are from the SOCOM world for the man-portable systems,” he said. “It really came out of the intel community. That effort to make it man-portable was driven by special forces. They want to be able to push all this information to the tip of spear. That initiative leads us to make a family of portables into a tremendous force multiplier.”

Among the competitors in this sphere, DRS Technologies pro-duces a wealth of communications solutions for the U.S. warfighter, but Thiran pointed to several of its products—specifically in special operations use—including their MAGIC situational awareness systems and manpack COMINT direction finding system tactical signal collec-tion system.

MAGIC (Mobile Mapping of Air and Ground Intelligence Com-munications) is currently used by special operations in mounted and dismounted avionics configurations in theater. They also provide man-portable versions for use with Windows-based tablets and smart-phones.

The scalable, open architecture system provides near real-time geo-located intelligence data on a moving 3-D map display designed

for integration with virtually any subsystem including intelligence broadcast receiver, situational awareness data link, MIDS/Link-16, PRC-117F/G, full motion video links, and electronic flight bag data sets. The firm also offers various data storage solutions to combine with a mounted unit and is looking to miniaturize the system further.

“Ultimately it [provides] network interconnectivity of airborne and ground bases, line of sight, non-line-of-sight [wireless communica-tions], all tied together, meeting all those needs in an overarching network” said Thiran.

DRS’s Manpack system allows a mounted or dismounted solider to collect tactical signal intelligence and geo-location information and share it across a network in theater with the intent of providing a line of bearing on a target to ensure a more rapid threat response.

“Narrowing the kill chain: at the end of the day that is what we are trying to do,” noted Thiran.

Verizon Wireless currently offers a number of component platforms for military use, including the DRS-supplied X10gx and Armor X7 rugged wireless tablets that connect through 3G cellular networks. Laura Cavey, associate director of federal data sales for Verizon Wireless, also pointed to their relationships with several software providers as integral to their effort to provide cellular- based software communications applications for the modern warfighter.

These include Lisle, Ill.-based Lextech Labs for situational aware-ness video solutions and Tampa, Fla.-based IP Vision Software’s video management solutions. Verizon is also heavily promoting its partnership with Salem, Mass.-based Blueforce Development Corp.,

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which provides the Blueforce Tactical (BTAC) secure information sharing and sensor normalization software for smartphones and PDAs.

Tested and evaluated by Special Operations Command, the BTAC software solution is designed to provide monitoring of real-time soldier biometric sensor information along with video and other information from sensors worn by the soldier, along with location tracking. That test also incorporated perimeter video as well as gas and chemical explosive sensor monitoring.

“They [SOCOM] really want to be able to take care, monitor and understand what is going on with the warfigther in the middle of a mission,” said Cavey.

cutting edge

For systems intelligence gathering and dissemination systems to work in theater, they must have access to wireless communications networks. It’s an integral competency in the technology chain on which military suppliers continue to make strides.

Fort Wayne, Ind.-based Raytheon Network Centric Systems is currently in the process of upgrading the company’s SMART-T (secure mobile anti-jam reliable tactical terminal) satellite com-munications systems for the Army from EHF (extremely high frequency) transmission capability to advanced extremely high frequency (AEHF) capability, increasing the data transmission rate

by a factor of five and providing for real-time video, mapping and targeting information transmission. The system provides long-haul communications that can connect multiple secure nodes for robust multi-channel non-line-of-sight communications in the field.

The Army just fielded the first of 365 of the updated HMMWV-mounted, generator-powered sys-tem to tactical units.

“[SMART-T] really has been a really great pro-gram,” Scott Whatmough, vice president of Raytheon Network Centric Systems’ Integrated Communica-tions Systems, told SOTECH. “We’re just waiting to get some satellites up there so we can provide [further] extended bandwidth for folks in the field.”

While it is one of Raytheon’s flagship commu-nications programs, given its four-foot antenna, he admitted that a SMART-T is hard to hide, making it ill-suited for special operations use. But Whatmough said the company is looking at reducing the size of the terminal and antennas while investing in next generation modem capabilities.

“I believe that if we can get our collective ducks in a row, we can provide some [special operations-centric] tactical AEHF terminals,” he said. “It’s going to take a few years but I think special operations will be interested.”

Whatmough also pointed to the company’s MAINGATE (Mobile Ad hoc Interoperability Network GATEway) system as something viewed as a major advance in terms of joint and coalition interopera-tional radio communications systems for mounted vehicles. Developed with DRS as a partner and under DARPA contract, it can link cell phones, other manu-facturers’ radio systems, and even incredibly slow analog legacy battlefield radios to provide combined signal throughput, utilizing airborne relay, SATCOM and other infrastructure interfaces for over-the-horizon communications.

Billed as the next generation of the DARPA Net-work Centric Radio System, the automatic spectrum management mobile solution has a data throughput capability of 10 MB per second, allowing for around 20 simultaneous live video feeds if deployed at full capacity, according to Whatmough. Though not in current operational use, there are 30 systems cur-rently in theater.

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Whatmough said Raytheon is working with the military’s spec-trum management operations to get the Joint Tactical Radio System compliant with the aim of getting it into the battlespace, adding that Boeing’s Ground Mobile Radio (GMR) for the Army is “once again under scrutiny.” That program has been plagued with cost overruns after the Army reduced its order from 86,209 to 10,293, boosting unit costs by 50 percent with, according to a Government Accountability Office report, research and development spending increasing by 69 percent from 2002 to 2011.

“[GMR] seems to have nine lives,” said Whatmough. “It does seem that GMR performance is going to open up that space for alternative solutions and we want to be one of those alternative solutions.”

Raytheon is pushing intelligence to the tactical edge. The company has developed new capabilities to put critical, protected information directly in the hands of forward deployed units to enhance mission effectiveness.

Raytheon’s Tactical Hand-Off Using Nearest Database Resource (THUNDR) runs on a standard laptop and allows greater mobility for intelligence collection and dissemination by special operations units and echelons at battalion and below. It provides warfighters ready access to intelligence data, maps, images and video with updated infor-mation in near real time.

“THUNDR has a modular and scalable deployment footprint and provides connectivity to a service’s cloud computing environment while having the capacity to function in a stand-alone environment when bandwidth or communications are restricted,” stated Mark Big-ham, vice president of business development, DCMS, for Raytheon’s Intelligence and Information Systems business.

“We’ve also developed the Raytheon Advanced Tactical System (RATS), a wireless mobile platform for users in communications-dis-advantaged locations to connect to local available networks, providing interactive communications and collaboration.”

According to Bigham, RATS can be rapidly integrated with new data types, communications systems and databases, providing a unique, secure and tailorable interface along with a software develop-ment toolkit for creation of new and customized secure apps. “RATS software allows common mobile devices to be used on the battlefield where ruggedness, battery life and screen visibility are all addressable through various hardware vendors.”

Thiran pointed to the DRS satellite communications on-the-move antenna line that provides continuous K and Ku-Band in-motion sat-ellite communications through a mounted dish platform in multiple configurations, for both ground and sea vehicles, as a key offering in special operations use.

He noted that they are considering expanding the system by lower-ing the size and footprint to allow for wider airborne use, and making it less physically prominent on ground vehicles. Additionally, they’ve tested the system on X and Ka bands and are hoping to get it certified for use on Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS), which utilizes these spectrum ranges.

“It is a key capability that is needed today and is not widely avail-able in the marketplace,” said Tiran. “That’s a key driver for us going forward.”

Boeing was awarded an additional $439 million Air Force contract in September for the components for an eighth WGS satellite. This continues the expansion of the fleet of fielded and proposed WGS satel-lites, three of which are already in orbit over the Pacific, Middle East and Atlantic regions. A fourth is scheduled for launch in January with two more, including one Australian-financed, expected to launch by

2013 and a seventh expected in 2015. All existing delivery options, part of the overall $1.1 billion contract awarded to Boeing, would bring the fleet of military WGS communications satellites to 12.

Satellite, deployable Wi-Fi and other wireless military communica-tion systems are not the only means for special operations soldiers to both deliver and get access to intelligence information in theater with the level of bandwidth required by the latest technological intelligence gathering and dissemination tools. While cellular networks dominate in some parts of the world more than land lines, particularly in many of the less developed regions where special operations soldiers must now operate, cellular solutions are viewed by some as an increasingly viable battlefield communications solution.

Verizon Wireless’s Cavey told SOTECH that their greatest offering for military communications is its low-latency, high-speed 4G LTE network. While currently only deployed domestically, she predicted LTE will probably become the next global cellular standard with its international partner Vodaphone, China Mobile and other global carri-ers adopting the high speed standard.

“Without that high speed data access, video becomes more difficult to do on networks that can’t support it,” said Cavey.

“The biggest limitation now is that it is only deployed in the United States,” she acknowledged. “However, that is not permanent. It is just where we are today. Verizon Wireless is on the cusp. We are on the cutting edge of deploying the technology first.”

Securing communications over any network remains a key con-cern of all wireless communications systems. Cavey—who is heavily involved in the firm’s military communications security certification efforts—said the company has been exploring cutting edge ways to secure systems, such as with a firm that has a secure mobile VPN that is SG-104 antenna certified, means to secure data using multi protocol label switching (MPLS) techniques that allow the information to go across a network backbone without touching the Internet or any other data, and deploying private networks within Verizon wireless systems.

A Navy pilot project testing their MPLS and mobile VPN solutions is currently underway. But while there is interest within DoD in new methods and technologies to secure communications data, that inter-est varies across the branches and even within them.

For instance, Cavey noted that SOCOM is more open to exploring new network security solutions when compared to Big Army and Big Navy, which are generally interested in sticking to tried and true data security concepts and communications technologies. Nevertheless, she added that the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., maintains a separate network used strictly for testing new products and solutions.

“It really depends on the customer which way we go,” Cavey said, about promoting conceptual tests and new means of securing data for the military end-user. “Some customers are open to looking at new ways of doing things. Others want to stick with the old handbook. If this pilot does work, that would be a way of rewriting the handbook, so to speak,” she added.

Cavey also added that while many in the U.S. military are inter-ested in secure, packaged communications solutions, SOCOM appears mostly interested in custom wireless communications products and is open to exploring cutting edge solutions that companies can provide. “They don’t want off-the-shelf solutions anymore, but something cus-tom,” said Cavey. O



a Single camo uniform may not work—unleSS it can cHange colorS.by Peter buxbaum


Is it possible to develop a single camouflage pattern that would protect soldiers in all kinds of environments? The answer, at this point, is decidedly negative.

The United States Army learned that the hard way with its selec-tion of the Universal Camouflage Pattern, or UCP, as its standard combat uniform in 2004. It took intervention from Congress for the Army to modify its strategy for a universal camouflage uniform when it passed legislation in 2009 requiring the Army to conduct a program to select a new camouflage for use in Afghanistan, and to replace UCP as the standard Army camouflage pattern.

The immediate result of the congressional mandate was to replace UCP in Afghanistan with another camouflage pattern called MultiCam while retaining UCP, for now, as the combat uniform outside of Afghanistan. The legislation also sparked the decision to conduct an extensive search for a replacement for UCP.

In July 2010, the Army’s Program Executive Office Soldier issued a request for information, asking industry to submit camouflage pat-terns that the Army could consider for its next-generation family of camouflage. The RFI specified that patterns would have a common design geometry with adaptations colored for woodland, desert and “transitional” environments for clothing, and a fourth multi-terrain pattern adapted for use on personal equipment like rucksacks and armored vests.

This is not to say that the dream of a universal camouflage pat-tern is dead. Companies have efforts of this kind on their drawing boards. But some of these would require advancements in technol-ogy—as well as a reduction in costs—before that dream becomes reality in the U.S. military or any other.

The Army’s camouflage solicitation, which closed last June, sought camouflage patterns and colors of similar geometric patterns to address the environments in 43 threat areas around the globe. “We were directed to evaluate camouflage holistically and globally,” said Jeff Myhre, product manager, soldier clothing and individual equip-ment, “and come up with something that could plug and play where soldiers are operating currently and on into the future.”

The Army introduced UCP “as a means of reducing the overall amount of equipment and uniforms that soldiers needed to carry,” according to Myhre. “UCP was a first-generation shot at cracking the code that would allow soldiers to wear the same uniform as they move between environments. There have been some developments between then and now” that the Army intends to exploit.

“The military has come to the realization that all-terrain univer-sal camouflage does not work in any environment,” said Guy Cramer, president and CEO of HyperStealth Biotechnology Corp., a competi-tor in the Army’s new camouflage contest. “The tradeoff has hindered the hiding of soldiers.”

The basics of camouflage involve two elements: blending and disruption. Blending, of course, refers to the ability to mix in with the surrounding environment. Disruption refers to the phenom-enon whereby the camouflage breaks up the solider into confusing parts, making a target harder to identify by an observer.

“Most camouflage will use one or the other or both to some extent,” said Dom Hyde, managing director of Hyde Definition Ltd., also a participant in the Army solicitation. “Blending is prob-ably best when it works, but when it fails, it fails completely. It can actually announce the figure.”

Blending works best at short ranges, a few hundred meters, according to Hyde. “After that it gets lost and produces a mono-tone effect,” he said. “Blending is a difficult trick to pull off.”

Disruption adds a level of confusion to the scene. “The human eye skips over stuff that it deems to be irrelevant,” said Hyde. “Dis-ruption allows a target to be misidentified. You need to break up the body every six to nine inches. When blending fails, disruption can buy you some time.”

According to Hyde, the Army’s UCP pattern was actually a step backward. “It is inferior in terms of disruption [compared to] its predecessors,” he said. “The colors chosen for UCP also leave something to be desired. Desert tan is an acceptable color for an arid environment, and urban gray is common in urban environ-ments, but the foliage green is really more suitable in semi-arid environments.”

The U.S. Army may have believed that mixing these three colors together would produce a single all-terrain pattern that was good enough to be universally applied to all uniforms and equipment issued to every soldier in the Army. “Common sense dictates that there is no such thing as a true universal camouflage scheme,” said Hyde. “Experience in Iraq and Afghanistan has proven that UCP is less effective in most terrains than other options.”

HyperStealth has designed camouflage that provides blending and disruption based on its study of fractals. “Fractals are the holy grail of camouflage patterns,” said Cramer. “A fractal is a repeat-ing geometric shape found in nature. These are shapes the human brain catalogs subconsciously and will tend to ignore more so than a traditional camouflage pattern.”

HyperStealth created a fractal-based camouflage uniform for the Jordanian military in 2003, after which the company came to the attention of DoD and its contractors. “The uniform blends and disrupts the human target,” said Cramer. “The key finding was that the camouflage masked the movement of soldiers as they move across a field. That is difficult to do with existing patterns.”

Also taken into account in the design of the Jordanian uni-forms was the diurnal cycle of daytime and nighttime. “A desert


pattern might work well during the day but may shine at night,” said Cramer. “Jordan was interested in a camouflage pattern that would work well for night operations and that would work okay during the day. Creating camouflage patterns often involves com-ing up with compromises.”

The Army’s current effort is a departure from its past approaches, according to Myhre. “DoD has always focused on specific areas of operation and [attempts] to crack the code for designing camouflage for that area,” he explained. “This is the first effort in history to look at camouflage holistically. We are looking at where U.S. soldiers are operating now and where they may operate in the future to develop a family of uniforms they can use anywhere on the globe.”

The transitional uniform is meant to allow soldiers to use the same gear as they move from one micro-environment to another. “In Afghanistan, you have areas that vary from sea level to 7,000 feet in elevation,” said Myhre. “You have heavily vegetated areas and arid and desert areas. We want to be able to address those environments and give them better concealment capabilities.”

Hyde Definition has designed and marketed digital, fractal-based camouflage patterns, beginning in 2008. “The result is that the wearer disappears into the textures and background noise of the environment,” said Hyde.

The company’s PenCott Multi-Environment Camouflage line works by mixing the different contrasting colors and tones into and against one another to give the illusion of several more col-ors, and to create a combination of blurred and sharp edges and shapes. “Complex patterns like this are harder for the human eye to process,” said Hyde, “and recognizable shapes such as human limbs, or the lines of pockets and seams, become more difficult to make out.”

The PenCott pattern includes both a micro-pattern and a macro-pattern for close range concealment and long range disrup-tion. It also includes a middle range pattern to further confuse the eye. “The illusion of depth is created by the juxtaposition of high contrast shades with light tones,” said Hyde. “Through an optical illusion, they appear to recede or sit behind the warmer mid tones in the pattern.” The company has already researched, developed and released the “woodland,” “desert” and “transitional” variations of PenCott, as specified by the Army’s solicitation.

The proposal Hyde Direction has submitted to the Army calls for a multi-environment camouflage system and is based on two parts: a reversible camouflage over-garment and a basic universal duty uniform. “The reversible camouflage over-garment would be made from a lightweight, breathable material that would enable it to meet the key requirements of concealment and comfort, and would feature reversible combinations of different uniform color-ations,” said Hyde.

The universal duty uniform is intended to be the standard uniform used alone for garrison, utility, and general fatigue and admin duties, as well as the undergarment for field and combat operations. The duty uniform would be available in two weights, light for summer and hot climates and heavy for winter and in cold climates, and in two colors: olive green, for verdant environments, and coyote brown for arid and semi-arid environments.

Hyde Definition has also recommended to the Army that the uniform patterns be printed on strong, lightweight, tear-, infra-red- and flame-resistant material. “Although this was not part of the official RFI,” said Hyde, “we included this recommendation

because we feel that the current uniform design is suboptimal as a field garment and that a loose fitting over-suit style would opti-mize PenCott’s camouflage and concealment properties.”

The Army is currently in the process of source selection for its camouflage program. Five companies will be chosen in November to move on to the second stage of the competition, which will involve field evaluations of the products. “At the beginning of the calendar year we expect to go to the manufacturing process,” said Myhre. “The field evaluations will begin in the spring. The ulti-mate goal is to evaluate those five families of uniforms and select the one that provides the best value to the Army. We expect to brief senior Army leadership in late 2012.”

Myhre expects the Army’s camouflage program will benefit from advances that have been made since it last introduced a new uniform. “There have been advances in dyes and in the methods used to apply color to fabric,” he said. “Today’s camouflage pat-terns do a much better job of masking targets, especially under night observation. Colors and shapes no longer bump into each other. They tend to fade in and face out, making for better conceal-ment of soldiers.”

Future camouflage uniforms are likely to be considerably different, even from those being proposed in the Army’s current competition. “We have gone as far as we can with conventional printed fabrics,” said Hyde. “The future is in adaptive camouflage.”

SoldierS aS cHameleonS

Hyperstealth is developing two products along those lines, one called Smartcamo and the other called Quantum Stealth. Smart-camo uses an intelligent textile that changes its color to match the background of the wearer in many environments. “It can change from woodland to desert and everything in between,” said Cramer. “The U.S., Canadian and British militaries have told us that this is something they would like to provide their militaries.”

Before Smartcamo can be incorporated into uniforms on a widespread basis, its price would have to come down. “Right now it would cost about $1,000 per uniform,” said Cramer. “This might be within the reach of some special operations groups but not for regular soldiers.”

Cramer predicts the technology will first be adapted to vehicles before being incorporated into soldiers’ uniforms. “The product requires a power source, which is no problem for a vehicle,” said Cramer. “It would mean a soldier would have to carry another couple of pounds of batteries. It would also not be out of line to spend $10,000 to apply Smartcamo to an Abrams tank.”

Last year Cramer announced the development of Quantum Stealth, a cloaking technology that bends light around a target. “Part of the Quantum Stealth technology is based on quantum mechanics, and the prototype material has demonstrated the abil-ity to actually cloak targets as visually undetectable,” said Cramer. “It doesn’t require a power source and it is not very expensive, but because of the nature and capabilities of the product, you probably won’t see it in the public eye in the near future.” O



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Herbert B. Rubens, Ph.D., is the CEO and co-founder of Persistent Systems LLC. He holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Johns Hopkins University. His work has been published more than a dozen times in international conferences and journals.

Q: What are the difficulties with current military mobile networking systems?

A: Special forces operate in increasingly complex urban environments as well as in caves and tunnels where radio systems encounter significant challenges. Con-nectivity changes due to mobility cre-ate frequent disruptions to traditional communications. The introduction of airborne radios further increases these systemic challenges. The Wave Relay mobile ad hoc networking [MANET] sys-tem was specifically designed to operate under these complex conditions.

Q: What is MANET using Wave Relay?

A: Wave Relay is Persistent Systems’ MANET capability. Wave Relay technol-ogy utilizes a wireless routing proto-col to self-create a radio network and to route video/data/voice reliably across the network by relaying it radio-to-radio. Whereas traditional military radios uti-lize low frequencies and high transmit power in an attempt to penetrate through buildings and other obstructions, Wave Relay radios intelligently route around these obstacles. Additionally, Wave Relay provides standard Ethernet connectivity, enabling existing systems and sensors to be integrated into one network.

Q: How far can you disperse nodes and still have the network up?

A: Independent government testing has verified in excess of 2 miles line-of-sight [LOS] and up to 37 Mbps for dismounted users. We have a tracking antenna system product which enables us to reach air platforms over large distances. The payloads on these air platforms become part of the network and their feeds can be accessed by the mobile users. Without

utilizing external amplifiers we have achieved data rates exceeding 1.5 Mbps to aircraft at distances of 105 miles. Additionally, the aircraft can extend the connectivity of dismount users and vehicles back to an operations center or to bridge coalitions of users.

Q: Tell us about the benefits to the mili-tary customer.

A: Wherever they travel, the network is there with them. They are not dependent on being in range of vehicles, fixed infra-structure or having satcom coverage. The radios provide a robust high bandwidth network that they physically wear. The network can transmit multiple video feeds and support push-to-talk voice.

Q: Will it save money and/or lives?

A: Most military radios are quite expen-sive and are typically designed to perform a single task. For example, a military ISR video receiver can weigh over 10 pounds, cost tens of thousands of dollars, can only receive video and cannot per-form any other function simultaneously. A Wave Relay man-portable unit (MPU Gen4) radio system costs around 10 times less and weighs around five times less and provides significantly more capability. A SOF team of 10 soldiers could be equipped with dismount radios at the same cost of providing a single soldier with an ISR receiver.

Wave Relay radios provide one-second-accurate position location information, enabling each soldier to know exactly where his team members are located. Multiple streaming full motion video feeds enable users to monitor feeds from air-borne and ground-based reconnaissance assets. Third-party sensors are connected to the network to inject more real-time

information, which leads to situational awareness, which can absolutely save lives on the battlefield.

Q: Are Wave Relay radio networks secure?

A: The radios have been validated by the National Institute of Standards and Tech-nology FIPS 140-2 Level 2 accreditation program. This means that the radios are approved for use in U.S. government for the transmission of sensitive but unclas-sified information. The radios are often employed with third-party Type-1 inline encryption devices that enable classi-fied information to traverse the wireless MANET securely up to top secret.

Q: How do operators access the informa-tion?

A: Wave Relay radios act as a seamless Layer 2 Ethernet Switch. Commercial and military computers/systems can be seamlessly connected to it. While run-ning the MANET protocol, Wave Relay can be connected to smartphone devices such as Android or iPhone so warfighters can access the data on the network by a user-friendly interface. Traffic on the Wave Relay MANET can be routed over tradi-tional Layer 3 systems such as GSM, 3G/4G and SATCOM networks and still maintain the ability to be ad-hoc. This capability provides a valuable extension of services when those networks are available.

Q: What’s the plan going forward?

A: We’ll continue to develop Wave Relay technology, making it smaller, lighter, faster and more capable. Wave Relay has been embraced by third-party manufactur-ers of unmanned systems, surveillance sensors, force protection and covert sys-tems. As these assets enter the networked world equipped with Wave Relay, their abilities are transformed. For example, seamless peer-to-peer connectivity enables autonomous systems to communicate, col-laborate and employ swarm behavior. Wave Relay has turned years of PowerPoint slides depicting lightning bolts and puffy clouds into a reality on the battlefield. O

inDuSTry inTErviEw SpECial OpEraTiOnS TECHnOlOgy

Herbert B. Rubens, Ph.D.CEO and Co-founder

Persistent Systems LLC


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