As David guest-edits Danger Room and runs his Top War Techs series, DTI's editors are going to weigh in over here with their favorites. Bill kicks us off:
"The target is between the two white buildings with the red roofs." Former USAF chief of staff John Jumper liked to cite this as an example of what was wrong with close air support (CAS) in Bosnia. The message is clear as day to the Predator operator with a soda-straw view of the ground, and less so to the jet pilot looking at a sea of white, red-roofed houses.
The Predator addressed this problem with a laser designator, but a
solution is now more widely available in the form of information-based
control of CAS. The best known example of this is the L3 Communications Rover
(remotely operated video enhanced receiver) series. Based on a rugged
Panasonic notebook computer, Rover was first deployed in conjunction
with Predator UAVs and used by special operations forces, and allows a
ground controller to see still images and streaming video from an
airborne sensor. However, it is now almost ubiquitous and linked to
targeting pods on fighters - a capability which will be improved as
those pods are fitted with their own data links. Other companies have
similar products - one notable example is Tadiran's V-Rambo ( Video
Receiver and Monitor for Battlefield Operations) with a wrist-mounted
video display.
It's not so much the technology as what you do with it and how it can be linked to other systems. The latest Super Hornets carry a digital imagery recorder - an airborne TiVo - so that pod imagery can be saved and retrieved - a still is often easier to use than video. Both the airplane and Rover allow the operator to draw a box around the target or friendly forces. The Marine Corps and special operations teams have used portable terminals to host a system that compares images with a stored digital map, reducing target location error (TLE) for weapon release
Rover and similar devices take the guesswork and twenty-questions voice communications out of CAS, and bring UAVs, gunships, helicopters and fast jets into the same systems. As such, they're what CAS has been looking for.
--Bill Sweetman
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