Sponsored By Oxley Developments
www.oxleygroup.com
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13 Aug 18. Oxley will be displaying a full range of LED lighting and electronic components for military vehicles and shelters at the prestigious DVD event on the 19th & 20th September at Millbrook. The team will be showcasing the range on Stand C4-600. The Oxley Searchlight is a high intensity LED unit fitted with handles and a clamping system to allow 360 degree rotation. The light can be mounted on a tripod and is suitable for vehicle use, alternatively tripod feet allow for deployment off the vehicle. This is a lightweight solution at just 2.2kg (tripod additional 3.5kg), the light offers a peak Intensity of 325,000cd with a power consumption of just 115W at supply voltage of 18-32.2V DC. Qualified IAW MIL-STD- 810F and RCTA DO-160F, the light is specifically designed for harsh environments with excellent resistance to shock and vibration and has an MTBF in excess of 50,000 hours.
The Oxley Compact LED Searchlight is designed as a fit and forget solution, specifically created for vehicle mounted requirements. The light provides an adjustable tilt angle and is available with a range of light distribution and beam intensity options, all designed to meet tough military standards. The light has high build standards which provide excellent resistance to shock and vibration and deliver a high reliability option for military users who require assurance of performance.
This is a lightweight option at just 1.4kg and the light offers a peak intensity of 152,000cd (/01 Spot Variant), along with all the benefits of LED technology including low power consumption of just 55W and a long life of 30,000 hours MTBF
Oxley has developed a range of low profile LED lights to satisfy a variety of requirements for robust, reliable and high performance lighting systems. The DC Combi light is ideal for new build and retro-fit projects. Unique in its design, it delivers white light plus an integrated blackout mode in a choice of colours.
In areas with limited space, the low profile design increases the available headroom. LED technology makes this a fit and forget solution, reducing overall costs through extended working life – on average 5x (typically 50,000 hours) including replacement, maintenance, disposal and labour costs. The requirement for surplus space to store replacement and used bulbs is eliminated, whilst the absence of mercury satisfies the environmental issue, providing a non-hazardous solution. The DC Combi light was originally designed for military vehicles and is also suitable for military field shelters, temporary work space lighting and naval/marine area lighting.
27 Aug 18. Global Military Land Vehicle Electronics (Vetronics) Market 2018-2028 – ResearchAndMarkets.com. The “The Global Military Land Vehicle Electronics (Vetronics) Market 2018-2028” report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com’s offering. Global Military Land Vehicle Electronics (Vetronics) Market 2018-2028 report offers a detailed analysis of the industry, with market size forecasts covering the next ten years. This report will also analyze factors that influence demand for vetronics, key market trends, and challenges faced by industry participants. The increasing complexities in modern day war techniques have resulted in a heightened requirement for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) activities, which has resulted in several key defense spenders to invest heavily in the research and development of ISR systems, such as thermal sights, infrared vision systems, and laser target designators. The rising demand for new sighting devices as well as infrared cameras and thermal imaging systems is therefore contributing significantly to the growth of the global military vetronics systems market.
Scope
- The Global Military Land Vehicle Electronics (Vetronics) Market, valued at US$2.3bn in 2018, is projected to grow at a CAGR of 3.78% over the 2018-2028 period, to reach US$3.4bn by 2028.
- The market consists of three categories: ISR Systems, Vehicle Protection Systems and C4 Systems. The market is expected to be dominated by the ISR Systems segment, which is expected to account for 52.6% of the market, followed by vehicle protection systems and C4 Systems with shares of 26.4% and 21.1%, respectively.
- The North America region is forecasted to dominate the sector with a share of 29.9%, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific with shares of 28.74% and 19%, respectively
Companies Mentioned
- Thales Group
- SAAB A.B.
- Elbit Systems Ltd
- Oshkosh Corporation
- General Electric Company
- Lockheed Martin Corporation
- General Dynamics Corporation
- BAE Systems PLC
- Ultra Electronics Ltd
- The Raytheon Company
- Safran
- FLIR System (Source: BUSINESS WIRE)
20 Aug 18. US Army Wants 70 Self-Driving Supply Trucks By 2020. The Army is ready for unmanned vehicles but not yet for a completely unmanned convoy. The 2020 iteration is called Expedient Leader-Follower because the Army still wants a human soldier driving the lead vehicle, with up to nine autonomous trucks following in its trail. But Oshkosh and Robotic Research told me they could take the humans out altogether, if the Army wanted. If you find self-driving cars impressive today, think about Army trucks that can drive themselves off-road, in a war zone, less than three years from now. For all the Army’s embrace of high technology, the service still wants the lead vehicle in the convoy to have a human driver, at least at first. But the unmanned trucks that follow behind will need to stick to the trail without relying on street signs, lane markings, pavement, or GPS. They might not even have a clear line of sight to the vehicle ahead of them, which may turn a corner in a city or disappear into a cloud of dust driving cross-country. En route, they have to avoid not only pedestrians, animals, and vehicles, like civilian self-driving cars, but also rubble, rocks, trees, and shell holes. And they have to avoid solid obstacles without stopping every time they see tall grass, a low-hanging branch, or a dust cloud in their path — the kind of common-sense distinction that’s easy for humans but very hard for computer vision.
But the Army is confident it can be done. Army Secretary Mark Esper has publicly enthused about the technology after riding in a prototype, saying it could both free up manpower for the front line — most troops work on logistics and maintenance, not in combat units — and save lives from roadside bombs and ambushes — to which supply convoysare particularly vulnerable.
After years of tinkering, the Army has accelerated its Automated Ground Resupply (AGR) program by spinning off something called the Expedient Leader-Follower demonstration. Contractors are currently installing Robotic Research LLC’s computer brains and sensors on 10 Oshkosh M1075 PLS (Palletized Loader System) trucks that’ll be used for safety certification tests in 2019. They’ll convert 60 more to self-driving vehicles in time to equip two Army transportation companies in 2020. While the two units’ main job will be to demonstrate the technology works in field conditions, “if they get called to deploy, they will deploy with the vehicles,” said Alberto Lacaze, president of Robotic Research, in an interview with me yesterday. “That could happen fairly quickly.”
Exactly when the large-scale demo starts in 2020 is still a moving target, based mainly on how 2019’s safety testing goes, said Pat Williams, VP for Army and Marine Corps programs at Oshkosh Defense. It’s the Army’s call on whether to compress the timeline, he told me, but “there’s interest in pulling that left where possible.”
The Limits of Leader-Follower
Leader-Follower is still a limited form of autonomy — but those limits are more about Army tactics and culture than the technology itself.
The Army is ready for unmanned vehicles but not yet for a completely unmanned convoy, which is slated for a later phase of the Automated Ground Resupply program, albeit perhaps as early as 2022. The 2020 iteration is called Expedient Leader-Follower because the Army still wants a human soldier driving the lead vehicle, with up to nine autonomous trucks following in its trail. The self-driving trucks may still have soldiers in them, able to switch to human control if necessary or, alternatively, to let the truck handle the driving while they watch for ambushes and shoot back at attackers. That’s all part of the operational concepts the Army wants to work out in the 2020 demonstration.
But Oshkosh and Robotic Research told me they could take the humans out much sooner, if the Army asked, and have the truck drive itself along a route that a soldier chose without any soldiers actually having to be present. (I didn’t talk to the other two Leader-Follower contractors because they’re less directly involved with the autonomy system: Lockheed Martin, which does integration work, and ECS, which builds the interface for human operators). The hard part isn’t getting a computer to trace a route on a map — even your smartphone can do that — but getting it to move through physical space without hitting anything. That difficulty of that challenge is why Tesla and Uber self-driving vehicles have ending up killing three people (which is still a lot better than human drivers).
“The technology does exist, but we’re not there yet with acceptance,” said Chuck Bunton, Oshkosh’s program manager for autonomous vehicles. “This is a phased approach.”
“This is a big milestone for the Army,” said Robotic Research’s Lacaze, both for combat troops and for the acquisition community. In next year’s safety certification tests, he told me, “this is the first time, to our knowledge at least, that ATEC (Army Test & Evaluation Command) is going to have to give a rating for a vehicle that is basically an SAE Level 5 (on a scale of 0-5), a fully autonomous vehicle without anybody in the cab.”
That said, Lacaze went on, Robotic Research and General Dynamics together fielded a self-driving vehicle that could lead convoys without a human aboard way back in 2008. (This was a Special Operations program in urgent wartime circumstances, able to bypass the usual testing process). While he’s not allowed to give details, Lacaze told me that “we deployed vehicles in Afghanistan for road clearing, fully autonomous… To our knowledge, that’s the first time that fully autonomous vehicles have been deployed in theater.”
Now, a route-clearance mission — finding and removing roadside bombs and other Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) so other vehicles can pass safely– is very different from a supply convoy. In some ways, it’s actually easier: You’re on a road, to start with, and you’re usually moving extremely slowly as you search for ad hoc mines. In other ways, it’s much harder, since screwing up means blowing up.
Despite the differences, Lacaze said the road-clearing mission pioneered key technology and learned useful lessons that carry over to Automated Ground Resupply. Plus, of course, computers in general and robotics in particular have improved immensely in the last 10 years. Robotic Research could “absolutely” build a completely unmanned convoy-leader vehicle, if only as a backup in case the human leader gets killed, he said, but the Army isn’t asking for that until a later stage of the AGR program: “There’s a lot of technology that we have to do that, but that’s not the program we currently have.”
With the technology already being installed on the Leader-Follower vehicles, however, there is a workaround to having a human in the convoy, Lacaze admitted when I pressed him. You’d still need a human to drive a leader vehicle down the route the first time, so the computer and sensors could figure out landmarks along the way, he said. But once the trail was digitally blazed, unmanned follower vehicles could drive themselves down it whenever. That might be minutes after the human led the way, or hours, or days, or “we could have one of those vehicles follow a leader from last month,” he said. “And we have demonstrated that on previous programs.”
How is this possible? Because of the ingenious way Robotic Research combines data from a wide array of sources to landmark a route.
Blazing the Trail
Civilian navigation nowadays relies on GPS. The military can’t, because both hostile terrain — like a narrow canyon in Afghanistan — and human enemies — using a Russian-made jammer — can block the GPS signal. There’s such a thing as an Inertial Navigation System (INS) that uses gyroscopes, accelerometers, and a lot of math to figure out where you’re going based purely on heading and velocity, but that kind of dead reckoning loses accuracy the further you go. So military robots need to check their location against landmarks, just like humans do, only without the benefit of hundreds of millions of years of evolution.
Rather than rely on any on technique, Robotic Research uses a belt-and-suspenders approach — although it’s really more like someone wearing multiple belts, several sets of suspenders, and some duct tape over those beltless trousers that are supposed to stay up by themselves in the first place. (The company did much of its earlier work on systems to help human troops navigate underground). If the enemy jams, decoys, or physically destroys one sensor, there’re several others that still work.
Sure, GPS is great if you can get the signal, so the system accepts that as one input among many, when it’s available. It uses INS to keep going between one landmark and the next. But the crucial part is how the system uses a combination of cameras, radars, and lasers (LADAR) to pick those landmarks.
The Leader-Follower vehicles don’t navigate the way humans do — “turn left at the 7-11 and then go, like, a couple blocks, past a big red house….” — because robots see the world much more precisely, with much less tolerance for ambiguity. A landmark for this system can be almost any solid, stationary, and distinctive object: a tree, a telephone pole, a rock, a section of curb, even a pothole. As the human drives the lead vehicle down the route, its autonomy system detects potential landmarks along the way, checks their location with multiple sensors, and then transmits the data to the followers.
Then, as each follower approaches the landmark in turn, it uses its sensors to detect it and confirm its own position, adjusting its Inertial Navigation System as needed. If the lead vehicle passed 1.9 meters to the left of a particular telephone pole, but the follower finds it’s passing 1.8 meters away, it knows it’s drifted 10 centimeters to the right and corrects its course accordingly.
What if the landmark isn’t there at all? Perhaps someone knocked it down after the leader passed by, for example, or the leader vehicle mistakenly tagged something that could move away. Well, then the follower software is smart enough to, in effect, give an algorithmic shrug and move on, following its INS until it can check itself against the next landmark.
Since the INS doesn’t actually drift that much — its average error after going 100 meters is just ten centimeters — the system can get by with relatively few landmarks. “If we had one of those features every mile, we would correcting sufficiently to drive in most areas,” he said. (He didn’t specify, but presumably the areas where you’d need to correct yourself most often to avoid hitting something, like cities or forests, are the ones with the most landmarks). It’s a bit like walking around your house at night with the lights off, he said: You can probably get by on dead reckoning most of the time, occasionally touching the wall to verify your position.
A Place for Humans?
This combination of landmarks and dead reckoning is what allows the unmanned follower to go down a trail a month after a human-driven leader vehicle marked it. Unlike in some earlier experiments, the unmanned follower doesn’t actually have to watch the manned lead vehicle go down the road ahead of it. It just has to see the same landmarks the leader saw at some previous point. It doesn’t have to see all of the landmarks either, just enough to keep correcting its inertial navigation system.
That the system could function without humans anywhere around, however, doesn’t mean that humans aren’t useful, Lacaze made clear. For the foreseeable future, humans will still be better at subtleties like whether an overhanging tree branch is safe to brush past or needs to be avoided because it’s strong enough to crack the windshield. They’re also better at picking up subtle signs of a roadside bomb or lurking ambushers, such as loose trash along the road, grass trodden down by passing enemies, or earth disturbed by recent digging.
What’s more, having survived the dinosaurs, giant killer birds, and saber-toothed tigers, mammalian brains are still better than computers at reacting to danger with either fight or flight. While the Army is also pursuing armed robotic vehicles, they will, initially at least, be remote-controlled by human operators, especially when they open fire, rather than self-driving like the unarmed Leader-Follower trucks.
Even if the robots get as good as humans eventually, they’ll still be good in a different way, simply because brain cells and microchips don’t work the same. On the battlefields of the 21st century, robots will complement human soldiers, not replace them altogether — but getting humans out of vulnerable supply trucks could save a lot of lives.
(Source: glstrade.com/Breaking Defense.com)
06 Aug 18. Stealthier Tanks Are On The Way. Several tech trends will make tomorrow’s tanks harder to spot — and that may have strategic implications. Truly game-changing technology does not develop in isolation. It results from the convergence of multiple trends and usually the combination of multiple technologies. For example, today’s social-media platforms did not arise from internet connectivity alone. Rather, they evolved iteratively over multiple generations of technological development, incorporating the miniaturization of digital cameras, the increase in portable computing power of smartphones, and advances in cellular connectivity. In that context, a cluster of technological trends may be converging to produce a potentially transformative battlefield capability: “stealth tanks.” This concept is not new and there is no certainty that these new technological developments will fully scale or prove operationally effective. But as these technologies develop they hint at possibilities that warrant serious discussion about their potential application to armored vehicles, as well as their operational and politico-strategic implications.
By “stealth,” we do not mean invisibility. Rather, it is a collection of technologies designed to reduce an object’s observable signature, thereby making detection more difficult. Even if temporary or incomplete, stealth provides a significant tactical advantage. Aircraft achieve stealth through a decreased radar cross section which incredibly complicates detection.
For a tank to be “stealthy,” its key observable qualities must be masked or concealed. Specifically, tanks are loud and emit substantial heat. Therefore, constructing a “stealth tank” would necessitate the reduction of these signatures, resulting in a quieter tank with a low infrared, or IR, signature.
Of the two, heat is the greatest concern, as most targeting systems use IR. Recent research on ion-soaked graphene sheets provides an exciting possibility. This thin and simple material can shield an object’s thermal signature and even match the surrounding temperature if actively manipulated. Applied to the surface of a tank, graphene sheets could eliminate or significantly reduce a tank’s IR signature.
If this concept effectively scales up, of which there is no certainty, it may be simpler and more cost-effective to implement than current options for IR camouflage. IR sensors are ubiquitous among modern militaries and many antitank missiles like the American FGM-148 Javelin are IR-guided. Masking a tank’s IRsignature would therefore make it difficult to both detect and target them with precision munitions.
Advancements in electric vehicles may also contribute to stealth by reducing noise and heat. Currently, a team of defense contractors, including SAIC and Lockheed Martin, is working to construct the first U.S. electric tank prototype; two demonstration vehicles are expected to be built by 2022. Moreover, the U.S. has expressed interest in military vehicles which generate their own electricity.
While battery weight is a problem for electric vehicles—especially for energy-intensive tanks that would require substantial battery power—the U.S. could consider a “series hybrid” approach like the original Chevrolet Volt or a “parallel hybrid” approach like diesel submarines. This would require a careful balancing requirements against battery weight and simplicity.
Passive stealth is fine, until you need to fire a round and thereby reveal your position. But even here, there are several options for retaining the advantage of stealth. (Of course, “jockeying” and defensive maneuvering to avoid detection and counter fire is, and will remain, a fundamental skill for tank drivers.)In the medium term, advanced networks and sensors, combined with emerging robotics, could create a “gun buggy” model similar to preliminary F-35 operational concepts. In this case, “stealth tanks” would refrain from firing themselves and instead direct remote autonomous platforms to deliver ordinance. These platforms would serve as organic mobile artillery and indirect fire support in a network-centric approach to warfare, allowing the coordinating tank to remain undetected.
In the longer term, there is the possibility of stealthier weapons. Miniaturization and tactical application of early-stage advanced weapons, like directed energy or rail guns, have great potential if they develop sufficiently and overcome their current limitations, such as energy requirements. Directed energy would be truly stealthy in that it bears no visual or audible profile, but it is unlikely to be as destructive as rail guns. An ideal model might involve using both in a co-axial arrangement.
If these technologies are brought together to enable comprehensive stealth for military ground vehicles, the key benefit would be survivability. By evading detection, “stealth tanks” would be much less vulnerable and therefore could gain greater flexibility on the battlefield, opening opportunities for greater operational unpredictability.
This concept of “stealth tanks” bears significant politico-strategic implications. Greater survivability reduces political risks and could result in lighter and faster designs that might allow easier deployment, enabling more regular application of that capability. If stealth technology enabled the development of more survivable lighter and faster tanks, they could add firepower to Strykerbrigades, be employed in a wider range of operational tasks, and even contribute to special operations and hybrid conflicts.
Despite the apparent advantages, there are limitations to the implementation of this technology. Significant electrical power is central to enabling most of the technology needed for stealth, but the weight and efficiency of batteries will be a limiting factor. That said, increasing adoption of commercial electric vehicles will likely accelerate developments in this area, and reducing the fuel requirements of the current armored fleet would have significant strategic and operational implications in and of itself.
All of aspects of this concept would need thorough testing to explore the opportunities, risks, and limitations of stealthy ground vehicles. However, the convergence of individually interesting, though not obviously significant, technological advancements has the potential to revolutionize one of the most critical facets of land warfare. Comprehensive stealth would have wide-ranging implications for future operating concepts and strategic decision-making. Although decades will pass before anyone truly understands these implications, it is imperative to begin conceptualizing a reality where “stealth tanks” stalk the future battlefield. (Source: Defense News Early Bird/Defense One)
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Oxley Group Ltd
Oxley specialises in the design and manufacture of advanced electronic and electro-optic components and systems for air, land and sea applications within the military sector. Established in 1942, Oxley has manufacturing facilities in the UK and USA and enjoys representation worldwide. The company’s products include night vision and LED lighting, data capture systems and electronic components. Oxley has pioneered the development of night vision compatible lighting. It offers a total package incorporating optical filters, equipment modification, cockpit and external lighting along with fleet wide upgrade services including engineering, installation, support, maintenance and training. The company’s long experience of manufacturing night vision lighting and LED indicators, coupled with advances in LED technology, has enabled it to develop LED solutions to replace incandescent and fluorescent lighting in existing applications as well as becoming the lighting option of choice in new applications such as portable military hospitals, UAV control stations and communication shelters.
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