New Technologies to Reduce Helicopter Vulnerabilities to Low-tech WeaponsAugust 12, 2011

 

U.S. military helicopters are equipped with defenses that allow them to evade advanced guided missiles, but unfortunately they are still vulnerable to low-tech weapons like guns shots and rocket-propelled grenades (RPG).

With the downing last week of the Army Chinook helicopter by RPG fire, which resulted in the death of 38 coalition soldiers, including as many as 20 Navy Seals, there’s a growing urgency to find a way to protect against such vulnerabilities.

Helicopters are “inherently very vulnerable” especially during takeoffs, landings and when hovering close to the ground, Rex Rivolo, a former Pentagon defense analyst and aviator, told The Wall Street Journal.

The Pentagon has already perfected repelling attacks by guided and heat-seeking missiles by using flares, lasers and infrared-flashing decoys that confuse them, according to an article in Wired.com.

But how can helicopters evade weapons that have no guidance system to fool?

With unguided weapons, “you counter that threat more through flight planning and technique,” a former Army helicopter pilot told Wired. He said pilots should use different routes, change speeds often and at all costs avoid becoming a static target by hovering. This gives enemies on the ground time to take aim and fire. “I was much more concerned about engagement by volleys of small arms and RPGs than SAMs [advanced Surface to Air Missiles].”

Military researches are looking for methods to counter low-tech weapons using acoustic gunshot detectors and ways to blind shooters who are taking aim by flashing dazzling lasers at them, according to several articles, including stories in Wired.com and The Wall Street Journal.

DARPA, the Pentagon’s advanced weapons research division, and the Army have been collaborating on using microphones placed at slightly different distances from each other to listen for shots. The small differences allow the system to calculate where the shot came from, according to Wired.com. The Pentagon now has four prototype “Helicopter Alert and Threat Termination” sensors, known as HALTT for short, deployed on Black Hawk helicopters in Afghanistan, according to the Wired.com article. Researchers are now tinkering with the HALTT sensors to enable them to pick up RPG fire.

Another technology developed by ITT uses a pair of lasers, one designed to confuse guidance systems of advanced guided missiles while the other blasts a bright light laser to “dazzle” an enemy shooter, making it hard for him to take aim.

Army helicopters are scheduled to have the HALTT and laser systems in place by 2017 if the prototypes are successful.