New Military Technology

This is an article featured from the current issue of ExtremeTech magazine.

By any standard, the U.S. spends a lot of money on defense. Of the $419.3 billion in funding President Bush has asked Congress to approve for 2006, $147.4 billion (35 percent) will go toward everything from national missile defense to combat boots, with $78 billion slated for weapons procurement (production that is), and the remaining $69.4 billion for research and development of new weapons systems. In fact, the U.S. will spend more on research and development than China—the next- biggest military spender—will dole out for its entire defense budget in 2006. So what exactly does that $147 billion buy for the U.S. soldier in Iraq?

Today's high-tech U.S. arsenal owes its legacy to the cold war, when America relied on advanced technology as a force multiplier to defeat its numerically superior Warsaw Pact foes. But in Iraq, enemy insurgents are outnumbered by U.S. troops. So why does the U.S. continue to depend so much on technology, when our soldiers are essentially engaged in a street brawl with an enemy that relishes close fighting and relies on an arsenal no more sophisticated than AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, wireless roadside bombs, and suicide bombers? Simply put, technology helps the U.S. soldier find and fight the enemy more effectively. And in this type of war, the modern soldier needs every advantage he can lay his hands on to win.

Let's follow a fictional soldier, Staff Sergeant Mack Hale, on a 12-month tour in Iraq. His infantry unit will participate in operations all over the country, especially in locations where the insurgents are active. His job will put him under daily threat of attack from an enemy who wants to find him as badly as he wants to find them. Continued... Sergeant Hale's first job is to get to Baghdad alive and join the rest of his unit. The army has landed him in Kuwait, and he must travel in a convoy north on Highway 8 from the Kuwaiti border to Baghdad. This is no simple stretch of road. It's notorious for the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) lining it. Typically, the insurgents use munitions or explosives looted from the country's arsenals during the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Building IEDs and boobytraps is a homegrown skill that dates back to the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. What makes today's IED different from its predecessors is the detonator—usually any wireless RF devices the insurgents can get their hands on: cell phones, garage door openers, car alarms, and even doorbells. Now, in an ironic twist, these are the very electronics that have poured into Iraq as part of the reconstruction effort. (Cell phone technology was, in fact, banned under Saddam Hussein.)

On this particular day, insurgents have daisy-chained nearly a dozen 130-mm mortar shells into a crude but deadly bomb wired to a cell phone trigger and placed in the trunk of a disabled car on the side of the highway. As the convoy passes the disabled car, an enemy spotter will call the cell phone and detonate the bomb. Fortunately for Sergeant Hale, Warlock Green is installed on his truck.

This communications jammer traces its pedigree back 15 years to an artillery countermeasures system known as the Shortstop Electronic Protection System (SEPS for short). It was developed by the Communications and Countermeasures Systems Division of EDO Corporation, manufactured under a Quick Reaction Capability program, and originally intended for the first Gulf War.

At the time, U.S. soldiers were facing a threat from Iraq's proximity-fuzed artillery shells, which could be fired from mortars, howitzers, rocket launchers, and the like. Using Doppler ranging techniques, such shells could detonate from 8 to 15 feet above the target area, scattering shrapnel in the most deadly pattern.

An omnidirectional antenna on the SEPS feeds signals to a receiver that constantly listens for the faint RF signatures emitted by individual or multiple incoming proximity-fuzed shells. The system compares detected signals against known proximity-fuze signals in its threat library, selects the optimal gamming algorithm, and transmits a countermeasure signal out through the transceiver and ommi antenna, prematurely detonating the incoming shell. The munition will burst 100 feet or more above personnel—far outside its lethal envelope.

From 1998 though 2003, the Army bought nearly 300 SEPS units in various configurations including a 48-pound stand-alone ground unit, a 50-pound vehicle-mounted system, and a 25-pound, battery-powered portable version. But by the summer of 2003, the Iraqi insurgency was ramping up, and remotely detonated roadside bombs became one of its most formidable weapons.

Soldiers needed to detect these bombs as early as possible and jam them. Secretly, the Army began modifying the SEPS design to detect many more types of signals, such as those from the increasingly common cell phone triggers. The development program, known as Warlock, worked on two configurations: Warlock Green and Warlock Red. Because IEDs are still a giant threat in Iraq, the Army has revealed very little information about either system. We'll tell you what we know. Continued... Warlock Green functions very much like SEPS, with a core transceiver that monitors across communications frequencies, from the 900 MHz of Iraq's GSM mobile phone network recently installed in Iraq down to signals used by garage door openers (288 to 418 MHz). The system, mounted directly to a military vehicle, requires 24 Volts, DC.

When the detector senses a potential threat—say a cell phone powering on—it cues the interference subsystem, which jams the bomb's receiver/detonator. Warlock Green systems, the more sophisticated and expensive of the two, cost about $90,000 each. The Army has bought roughly 300 so far.

The Army has also taken delivery of about 1,200 Warlock Red systems at $12,000 a piece. As the more basic units, these may not have receivers at all. Each draws 12 Volts, DC from a vehicle's cigarette lighter and is probably activated by the driver upon approaching a suspicious vehicle or object by the side of the road. Because insurgents have employed a wide variety of RF detonators, both systems are very likely field reprogrammable so technicians can adapt them as new threats appear.

The Warlocks are the most talked-about IED jammers in Iraq, but they're not the only ones. In March, the Army's vice chief of staff revealed that his service is buying 8,000 IED jammers for Iraq. These are just part of a broader IED- defeating strategy that includes better training for soldiers deploying to Iraq, more vehicle armor, development of a variety of IED sensors, and new IED- neutralizing technology. Continued... After avoiding the roadside bomb and arriving in Baghdad, Sergeant Hale's unit is given a mission: Capture several leaders of the insurgency when they gather at an upcoming meeting in a large town near the Syrian border. There's no intelligence on when the summit will take place, so soldiers need to monitor communications in and around the town.

When the rebel leaders appear, they must be captured swiftly to prevent their escaping across the border. Throwing the targets into confusion will be critical to the operation, so the plotters' communications must be disrupted at the right moment.

But the enemy's network, although primitive, is effective and difficult to intercept. Iraqi insurgents are known to communicate via chains of people operating low-power walkie-talkies—a modern-day smoke–signal network. The short range (10 miles) of these 40- to 50-MHz radios makes them difficult to detect, much less monitor.

Communications intelligence assets (COMINT assets, in Army parlance, but we'll use the highly technical term spy gear) must be at the right place at the right time without being seen, making the Humveemounted Prophet signal intelligence/electronic warfare system or unmanned Predator planes impractical.

This operation requires a nearly invisible, remotely operated system that can get close to the walkie-talkies, listen to them, and pinpoint their locations in real-time 24 hours a day. It also demands a jammer that can take out enemy communications without affecting the soldiers' own radios. The Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are working on just such a system: WolfPack. DARPA kicked off WolfPack in 2001 as a response to a problem during Bosnian operations in the 1990s. In that conflict, U.S. forces realized there were no front lines—the map of hotspot cities and towns looked like a checkerboard.

Communications in several places needed to be monitored, but the limited intelligence assets couldn't be everywhere at once. And although unmanned planes could cover a lot of ground, they weren't entirely suitable—mountains often obscured communications signals. Troops needed a remotely operated system that they could leave behind when moving out of an area.

The Army had used such spy gear before (even back in the Vietnam War), but needed smaller, longer-lasting systems that could monitor a wider range of frequencies, accurately locate their sources, and jam them when necessary. This formidable list of requirements produced the WolfPack concept, currently under development. Continued... A WolfPack device (known simply as a Wolf) is a 6-pound cylinder about the size of a Pringles can. BAE Systems, the manufacturer, anticipates that in full production each will cost around $10,000. Between a battery at the bottom and inflatable antenna that deploys from the top lie the printed circuit boards of the receiver subsystem, signal processors, and a transmitter that connects to the antenna.

The deployment concept for WolfPack devices is dynamic to say the least. Six to ten Wolves will be distributed at strategic positions—hilltops, for example, or any high ground—around a target area. Units can be hand-placed by soldiers, dropped from airplanes, or delivered by artillery. The devices, which communicate using spread-spectrum techniques to make detection by enemy direction-finders difficult, form an ad hoc RF network.

Each unit reports its precise position as determined by a built-in GPS, and the group designates one Wolf to function as a gateway communicator that sends real-time information to the larger battlefield network and receives mission updates. A Wolf monitors its area for enemy communications, determines the lines of bearing for the emitters, and transmits the data to the gateway.

The network optimizes coverage and can triangulate the lines of bearing, letting it locate enemy targets to within about 30 feet—good enough for targeting artillery and a number of other weapons. Once the local network accurately determines a target's GPS coordinates, the gateway sends the data to the battlefield network.

Wolves can jam specific communication types, or they can jam a particular portion of the spectrum to drive enemy communications into a smaller range of available frequencies. This spectrum herding makes listening to the enemy much easier. And by operating so close to their targets, Wolves need less power for jamming, reducing the chances of jamming fratricide when friendly forces are in the area.

Wolves use power management techniques to extend battery life up to 2 months. When a Wolf does go down, the network detects casualty and the remaining units reconfigure accordingly, even if that means designating a new gateway. Continued... The WolfPack has done its job. Based on intercepted communications, the Army knows the insurgent leaders are gathering in town, and an assault will commence soon. The WolfPack network will jam enemy communications at the beginning of the attack, but intelligence reports suggest some of the enemy may fight instead of fleeing—buying time for the leaders to escape across the Syrian border.

As the attack begins, enemy snipers move among the low, squat buildings and through the town's narrow streets and they can easily slow the assault. Historically, snipers hold a tactical advantage: They're unseen and silent until they fire, and they can aim and fire over a great distance to help maintain their edge.

Most often, soldiers hear a shot before they see the assailant. In the confusion that follows, the shooter relocates before anyone can get a fix on the direction of attack, much less return fire. In Iraq, however, the Army hopes to level the playing field with advanced detection systems that put hidden attackers at greater risk than ever before.

After being frustrated when searching for Bosnian snipers in the 1990s, the Army, the Marine Corps, and the Army Special Operations Command began investigating the most promising sniper detection technologies. Most of today's systems come from manufacturers in the U.S., Europe, and Israel and fall into a few categories.

Acoustic sensors detect the muzzle blast from a rifle and follow the bullet shockwave. Staring infrared systems see the flash and trace a bullet's thermal trail. Laser systems illuminate a weapon's optical sight and detect its reflection, helping locate the weapon before it's fired.

But because of readily available adapters for weapons, none of these funky approaches is foolproof: Snipers can employ silencers to muffle guns, use flash suppressors to hide the explosion of light from the muzzle, and fit filters to their sights to eliminate reflections. To date, combining detection technologies seems the most effective approach.

When Army tanks entered Baghdad on April 7, 2003, military planners were already getting ready for a new phase of the conflict that was nearly the opposite of the previous week's rapid advance through Iraq. An army that had relied on mobility to provide some degree of safety for its soldiers now had to stand still. And the enemy had changed tactics: It had learned how to stage attacks that would draw U.S. soldiers to a location of its choosing. The new scenario favored the use of snipers on both sides. Continued... In late April, one of the first requests for sniper-detection equipment came from the Army's 101st Airborne Division, which was assigned to northern Iraq. By the following month, the Army's Rapid Equipping Force had supplied the 101st with 20 Pilar sniper-detection systems from the French company Metravib.

The Pilar system uses a 4.5-pound foldable acoustic sensor array to detect and measure the shockwave and the muzzle blast from any weapon firing 5.45to 20-mm ammunition. Signals from the array go to an 8-pound Data Interface Acquisition Module (DIAM), which can process the information in under 2 seconds and display the results on any ruggedized PC that has a 2GB hard drive, 256MB of RAM, and a USB connection. Using this data from the DIAM, Metravib's Shotguard software gives a 3D view of the location of a shooter. The sensor array and DIAM take power from a 10- to 30-volt DC battery supply or a vehicle's electrical system.

Read a previous feature from ET magazine: Inside Smart Guns.

One version of the Pilar system is a stationary ground model that uses two separately positioned sensor arrays. It can determine the origin of a gunshot to within 2 degrees and display the shooter's approximate range up to 1,500 meters. A vehicle-mounted configuration uses a single array and can locate a sniper's position to within 5 degrees while the vehicle is moving. Both achieve greater accuracy when integrated with an IR sensor such as the company's PIVOT day or night camera. The Pilar system costs about $70,000 per unit, while the PIVOT is about $200,000.

A Sense of Balance No one would claim that technology is going to win the day for U.S. forces in Iraq. Training, determination, support, and competent leadership play the most important roles in battle. But today's soldier is far more receptive to using new technology than his predecessors. And that technology, in its small way, can help tilt the advantage.

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.