Military helicopters have sophisticated electronic countermeasures to detect and defend against surface-to-air missiles, by jamming or fooling the seekers that guide the missiles to target. Now the Pentagon's far-out research arm wants to take things a step further, by protecting against unguided -- but equally dangerous -- small arms fire.
In testimony yesterday, Regina Dugan, the new head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, described a new acoustic sensor the agency was developing to alert aircrews to ground fire.
The system -- called HALTT, for Helicopter Alert and Threat Termination -- is a hostile-fire indicator that would give the pilot a warning of attack, and pinpoint its origin. It would work by detecting the distinct acoustic signature (or "crack") of a bullet as it passes through the air. It would then indicate the shooter's position. HALTT, Dugan said, "would make it very dangerous to shoot at U.S. forces -- because the first shot may very well be the adversary’s last."
Dugan also gave an interesting statistic: Incoming small arms fire, she said, accounted for 85 percent of hostile engagements against helos. A prototype of the system has been installed on an Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, and Dugan said the military was planning to deploy several systems to Afghanistan for real-world evaluation.
Gunshot location systems like Boomerang are already in service on some military vehicles. Integrating this system on an aircraft represents a logical -- and rapid -- next step. Dugan said: "From funding allocation to live fire test completion, this effort took an unprecedented 5 months and will be fielded in less than a year from identification of the need."
[PHOTO: U.S. Department of Defense]
