Sailors could get high-tech surveillance help

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Sailors could get high-tech surveillance help
By Philip Ewing - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Aug 14, 2008 6:00:56 EDT

The Navy’s interest in cutting back the number of people it sends into potential combat situations doesn’t just apply to ships at sea — even as more sailors of the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command venture onto shore, the service has plans to help them patrol an area with just a handful of people.

Dubbed Navy Expeditionary Overwatch, the system links a ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle, a robot boat, a sophisticated Humvee and some high-tech control gear. Working together simultaneously, the different pieces are designed to let NECC keep track of an area of about 10 square miles, although as program testing advances, that could increase to about 20 square miles. With four people in the Humvee and a maximum of six in the control trailer, NEO would enable just 10 sailors to keep constant watch over marshy terrain, a section of river or near a coastline, said Frank Lagano, an integration specialist with the Office of Naval Research.

The network clearly isn’t set up for major combat, Lagano said, but it would let just a few NECC sailors keep constant watch over a swath of territory and, if necessary, attack individual vehicles or small groups of enemies. The ScanEagle UAV, an unmanned boat and a Gunslinger-model Humvee were on display at ONR’s annual Science and Technology conference Tuesday in Washington.

Engineers want each part of the overwatch network to feed what it sees back to the control trailer, where sailors can direct each vehicle to help with monitoring or attacking. If the ScanEagle sees an unauthorized boat, for example, controllers can send their unmanned boat to intercept it. The robot boat has a Long Range Acoustic Device, so the sailors in the control trailer can speak to and hear from people the unmanned boat encounters. Commanders also can use the LRAD as a nonlethal weapon to blast enemies with sound, or they can attack with the unmanned boat’s onboard gun.

The Gunslinger-model Humvee also has a remote-control gun, operated by a gunner who sits at a control panel in the back-left seat. The Mk 45 weapons system is hooked up to video and infrared cameras and has a set of sensors designed to detect gunfire, including a device that watches for muzzle flashes and listens for the report of a gunshot. All of the equipment on the roof of the Humvee also is linked with the NECC sailors in their control trailer.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/08/navy_necc_081308w/



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