rbonuc29
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wonder why IED's have dropped so much? and Motor attacks dropped so much? and why convoy attacks are nearly now where to be found.
heres why llol
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FORT MONMOUTH, N.J. -
In an aging office park not far from the Ferris wheels and boardwalks of the New Jersey shore, the Army’s fight against Iraq’s insurgents and Afghanistan’s Taliban is in high gear. Here, where among other things the aircraft altimeter was invented (1933), the first “walkie-talkie” was developed (1936), and where the Army trained courier pigeons until 1957, engineers and researchers are working on ways to counter two of the most deadly and effective weapons in the arsenal of America’s enemies: mortar attacks and IEDs -- or “improvised explosive devices.” Collectively, these two weapons have taken more than 500 American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past three years.
“A very significant portion of Army casualties comes from mortars and IEDs,” says Larry Smith, deputy chief of staff for operations and planning at the base. “We have people working on things that save American lives, and we’ve been working full out ever since Sept. 12, 2001.”
At the start of next month, Fort Monmouth will begin shipping to eager units in Southwest Asia the fruits of its research -– an important software update to a portable radar array its engineers developed several years ago.
The array is known as “Lightweight Counter Mortar Radar” and it was designed to provide protection for special operations forces routinely forced to set up camp behind enemy lines, where attack can come from any direction.
Deployed by U.S. Army Rangers for the first time in early 2004, it allows American troops to quickly identify the exact spot that a mortar round originated and, if all goes well, destroy the weapon before it can get off another round or move to a new position. In June, after just six months of seeing the LCMR in action, the Army named it one of the inventions of the year, and commanders have credited Fort Monmouth and the LCMR’s contractor, Syracuse Research Corp., with saving dozens of lives.
Larry Bovino, the senior engineer who oversaw development of the radar, says the updating coming this month is much in demand: a software rewrite that will allow the very same radar system not only to direct “counter battery fire” but also to give off a warning signal before even the first round hits.
“Over the past year or so, with the LCMR in action in Iraq and Afghanistan, people came to us and said that the early warning piece would really be nice,” he said. “The update will go out in a CD. It should be as easy as putting a new game on your computer.”
Work like that done at Fort Monmouth and the two dozen other major military laboratories in the United States often gets obscured by the more compelling news from the front lines. “Sometimes, it’s just not very sexy stuff,” says Smith, who has risen to the upper levels of management at Fort Monmouth since arriving in 1976 as an intern. “But we also have a lot of sensitive stuff that can’t be discussed freely for security reasons.”
Larry Smith, deputy chief of staff for operations and planning at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey.
Among the more recent
“home runs” hit by the Fort’s various labs: new “Joint Network Node” radios that allow even small units to bounce vital communications off of satellites rather than relying on unreliable “line-of-sight” radio signals; the phraselator – a handheld device that “speaks” up to 30,000 pre-programmed phrases in dozens of languages, and “Blue Force Tracking” systems that are credited with reducing “fratricide” or friendly fire deaths to virtually zero, an amazing and underreported aspect of the war given the high friendly fire casualty rates of previous conflicts.
Right now, the Holy Grail is something called Crew 2 — a product of the Information Warfare unit at the fort that commanders hope will help prevent the Iraq insurgents and other groups from using cell phones to detonate IEDS.
Like the counter-mortar radar, Crew 2 is built on the back of an existing system — a countermeasures device known as Warlock which proved ineffective in the end because it could not block the frequency of a radio detonator unless it intercepted it, which is very difficult. Crew 2 is said to work differently, but just how is being kept very quiet.
“We don’t talk much about Crew 2, and we certainly don’t describe its capabilities in any specific way or even describe the device it counters,” says Tim Rider, an Army spokesman. “There’s a chess game going on between us and the insurgents, and we’re not giving away our moves.”
heres why llol
+++++++++++
FORT MONMOUTH, N.J. -
In an aging office park not far from the Ferris wheels and boardwalks of the New Jersey shore, the Army’s fight against Iraq’s insurgents and Afghanistan’s Taliban is in high gear. Here, where among other things the aircraft altimeter was invented (1933), the first “walkie-talkie” was developed (1936), and where the Army trained courier pigeons until 1957, engineers and researchers are working on ways to counter two of the most deadly and effective weapons in the arsenal of America’s enemies: mortar attacks and IEDs -- or “improvised explosive devices.” Collectively, these two weapons have taken more than 500 American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past three years.
“A very significant portion of Army casualties comes from mortars and IEDs,” says Larry Smith, deputy chief of staff for operations and planning at the base. “We have people working on things that save American lives, and we’ve been working full out ever since Sept. 12, 2001.”
At the start of next month, Fort Monmouth will begin shipping to eager units in Southwest Asia the fruits of its research -– an important software update to a portable radar array its engineers developed several years ago.
The array is known as “Lightweight Counter Mortar Radar” and it was designed to provide protection for special operations forces routinely forced to set up camp behind enemy lines, where attack can come from any direction.
Deployed by U.S. Army Rangers for the first time in early 2004, it allows American troops to quickly identify the exact spot that a mortar round originated and, if all goes well, destroy the weapon before it can get off another round or move to a new position. In June, after just six months of seeing the LCMR in action, the Army named it one of the inventions of the year, and commanders have credited Fort Monmouth and the LCMR’s contractor, Syracuse Research Corp., with saving dozens of lives.
Larry Bovino, the senior engineer who oversaw development of the radar, says the updating coming this month is much in demand: a software rewrite that will allow the very same radar system not only to direct “counter battery fire” but also to give off a warning signal before even the first round hits.
“Over the past year or so, with the LCMR in action in Iraq and Afghanistan, people came to us and said that the early warning piece would really be nice,” he said. “The update will go out in a CD. It should be as easy as putting a new game on your computer.”
Work like that done at Fort Monmouth and the two dozen other major military laboratories in the United States often gets obscured by the more compelling news from the front lines. “Sometimes, it’s just not very sexy stuff,” says Smith, who has risen to the upper levels of management at Fort Monmouth since arriving in 1976 as an intern. “But we also have a lot of sensitive stuff that can’t be discussed freely for security reasons.”
Larry Smith, deputy chief of staff for operations and planning at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey.
Among the more recent
“home runs” hit by the Fort’s various labs: new “Joint Network Node” radios that allow even small units to bounce vital communications off of satellites rather than relying on unreliable “line-of-sight” radio signals; the phraselator – a handheld device that “speaks” up to 30,000 pre-programmed phrases in dozens of languages, and “Blue Force Tracking” systems that are credited with reducing “fratricide” or friendly fire deaths to virtually zero, an amazing and underreported aspect of the war given the high friendly fire casualty rates of previous conflicts.
Right now, the Holy Grail is something called Crew 2 — a product of the Information Warfare unit at the fort that commanders hope will help prevent the Iraq insurgents and other groups from using cell phones to detonate IEDS.
Like the counter-mortar radar, Crew 2 is built on the back of an existing system — a countermeasures device known as Warlock which proved ineffective in the end because it could not block the frequency of a radio detonator unless it intercepted it, which is very difficult. Crew 2 is said to work differently, but just how is being kept very quiet.
“We don’t talk much about Crew 2, and we certainly don’t describe its capabilities in any specific way or even describe the device it counters,” says Tim Rider, an Army spokesman. “There’s a chess game going on between us and the insurgents, and we’re not giving away our moves.”
