Last week, I talked about the family of small robots (SUGV’s) the Future Combat Systems program is hurriedly putting though testing and development, but there are other unattended systems FCS is testing that deserve mention. Chief among them is Textron’s Unattended Ground Sensors (UGS); a whole family of small, battery-powered nodes that soldiers can place out in the field, or inside a building, in order to keep “eyes on” from a distance.

The UGS come in two forms, the Tactical UGS and the Urban UGS. Tactical have four different versions, including the ISR node, which contains magnetic, seismic, and acoustic sensors; the Gateway node which is a communications relay system; an Electro-optics node with an EO camera for the day and an infrared camera for night; and a Radiological/Nuclear node. The Tactical UGS are about a foot long and several inches wide (exact specs are classified), and are typically partially buried so they aggressor units can’t see them while passing by. Urban UGS are smaller, and are placed on walls inside buildings to monitor rooms already cleared by soldiers. The two UGS send data back to the Gateway, which then processes the information and send its out through the FCS communications system.  

In April, the UGS sensors went through some pretty extensive testing at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and Army and Textron officials claim that the tests proved the UGS technology out. According to Charlie Williams, FCS Spin Out 1 program manager for FCS Lead Systems Integrator, Boeing, the testing resulted in some “mixed feedback” from soldiers, and Boeing and Textron are “developing that, and making some changes.” He wouldn’t elaborate about some these changes, but said that they were things like the data screens being “more engineer-friendly than soldier friendly.”

The April tests were scenario and vignette-driven, and combined the UGS systems with the Humvee and Bradley-installed B-kit—the FCS communications software—to form the vaunted “network” that is the Holy Grail of FCS program managers. Williams told DTI that the tests were set up “such that you would set up a Tactical UGS field, and we would drive a vehicle past at various ranges to see if you could detect it, classify it, and send the data to other units. There were several vignettes that combined multiple tasks, such as a vehicle would drive into the UGS field and establish contact, and then leave the UGS field and then another vehicle would come in.”

But the UGS can detect more than one object at a time. Williams described the testing this way: “You would have aggressor units that would come through the Urban UGS field at the same time that you would have tanks or aircraft going into your Tactical UGS field, and you would establish those contacts. From the non-line of sight perspective, we would get a target in the Tactical UGS field, pass the fire command and initiate a response. We combined all of those in various vignettes—we detected helicopters, we detected tanks, heavy wheeled vehicles, light wheeled vehicles, and dismounted troops, and we had multiple combinations of how we would apply that to make sure the system had the capability to bring it up. And it did. The data went from the UGS to the B-kitted vehicles, which would then transmit it to the non-B-kitted vehicles through FBCB2.”

While the UGS program is scheduled to be rolled out with FCS’ Spinout 1 in the 2011 time frame, program managers are also working out ways to improve the system in the future, including taking the soldier out of the picture entirely—at least when it comes to emplacing the Tactical UGS in the field. Dave Scaringella, program manager for Future Combat Systems at Textron says that “right now, the systems are hand emplaceable, but we’re working on remote deployment capabilities, so in the future you might find these sensors carried by a UAV or manned aircraft and dropped in place.”