SPiDR-Light Tactical Vehicle

Soldiers have a strongly felt need to locate the source of hostile fire, an aspect of situational awareness that is always both urgent and important. A Hostile Fire Detection (HFD) system enhances situational awareness, survivability, and a warfighter's lethality against threats including small arms fire (SAF) and larger projectiles (e.g., cannons, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank guided missiles). Rapidly locating the sources of hostile fire enhances situation awareness and shifts the warfighter from defense — locating the sources of the threat — to offense, accurately counter-attacking the shooters. This project augments our existing, proven, multi-aperture SPiDR-Tactical radar technology with adaptions for moving vehicles plus adding electro-optical (EO) sensors for detecting larger projectiles at longer ranges. Phase I demonstrates the feasibility of a multi-spectral, multi-aperture, multi-modal HFD system for moving ground vehicles — "SPiDR-LTV" — with the ability to cue and track for a vehicle-mounted APS. We already have extensive analyses and quantitative simulations of the SPiDR radar, so our work focuses on adapting the radar system for short-range detection and tracking on tactical vehicles plus evaluating the addition of EO sensors for long-range detection and tracking. Breadboards of the radar sensor are not necessary because proven prototypes plus highly detailed simulation models already exist, but breadboards of the EO sensor(s) may be useful in demonstrating feasibility. During the Phase I Option period, we begin designing the Phase II surrogate system. SPiDR-LTV detects all classes of incoming hostile fire and geolocates the shooter(s). The system is packaged as a number of outward-looking radar+EO sensor modules cabled to a VICTORY-compliant central processing unit (CPU). SPiDR-LTV uses "Cursor on Target" (CoT) data to show hostile shooters on a map display and passes cueing and 3D tracking information over a MAPS Architecture Framework (MAF)-compliant interface to an APS.