A NEW WAY OF THINKING
this is a statement of objectives on what we want it to look like.’ And then we send it out to all 500 [DOTC] members.”
Other than being a mesh-networked, human-in-the-loop system of munitions, exactly what GLMR will look like and how it will perform have yet to be determined.
Te prospective GLMR is “really a family of capabilities that falls underneath this broad topic area of terrain-shaping,” said Matt Butler, deputy project manager for Close Combat Systems. “Te Army’s legacy mine capability … is gone, and that includes capabilities that we use to shape the fight in the deep sense—well forward of our FLOT [forward line of own troops]—but also shape the terrain in a tactical sense, in our engagement area, and then closer in a protective obstacle sense.”
All of those capabilities translate to an area of significant size—hence the complexity of the problem. Close refers to hand- or vehicle-emplacement of obstacles out to 4 kilometers from friendly troops. Mid is rotary wing- or artillery-delivered obstacles 4 to 17 kilometers from FLOT. Deep is Air Force bomber- or fighter- delivered obstacles from 17 kilometers out to 300 kilometers, Butler said.
Te idea is that GLMR would not only prevent an enemy from using the mined territory, which is something that AP and AV mines do very well, but the new technology also would allow friendly forces to maneuver freely in the same space, something that AP and AV mines heretofore could not.
GLMR’s concept means that when something or someone enters the shaped terrain, a sensor alerts a Soldier, who can assess the alert and respond appropriately,
40
HALFWAY THERE
Pfc. Eric Groom, a combat engineer assigned to the 40th Engineer Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, adjusts an M7 Spider Networked Munition system during Network Integration Evaluation 16.2 at Fort Bliss, Texas, in May 2016. The Spider represented a partial solution to problems created by mines left on the battlefield after hostilities end; PEO Ammunition, DARPA and a handful of companies and government agencies are working to solve the problem completely. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Cheneé Brooks, 55th Combat Camera)
either eliminating a threat or logging an incident. A meshed network is self- repairing: Each sensor can communicate with all of the others so that if there is a breach or malfunction and a sensor is destroyed, the rest of the network will continue to function and the barrier will remain intact.
Such a network has much wider potential use in military and nonmilitary environments, assuming that it can be made to function as intended. Just the communications
you can do something, and then there’s reality. And lots of things fall apart when they get to reality.”
In many respects, that’s exactly what the ARCIC and PEO Ammunition folks are working on in a broader context—giving promising capabilities a better chance to succeed when they do come up against reality. And they want to do this as fast as possible.
capability—which,
according to Tomas Hammel, a founder of two-person Fantastic Data, must go beyond 4G LTE—could find utility in many different applications.
But, Hammel noted, while his company did show the feasibility of the concept,
“nobody has demonstrated it, and that’s one of the things that our team is going to do in phase one.” For him, “Tere’s analysis that says you can do something and then there are simulations that say
MAKING SPEED HAPPEN Fantastic Data and three other teams— the latter including defense industry stalwarts Orbital ATK Inc., Textron and Northrop Grumman Corp., along with nontraditional
subcontractor
partners—are trying to develop the GLMR capability in nine months (a very short timeline in the DOD procurement world) and at relatively low cost. Te problem is not a simple one, according to Hammel. But it has the U.S. military’s attention, which makes all the difference. Tat wasn’t always so.
Army AL&T Magazine
January-March 2017
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