The Shadow War

On the Battlefield:
Spy Planes, Smart Sensors,
and Superfast Missiles

Finding terrorists on the ground is almost as difficult as finding hidden messages on the Internet. In conventional warfare, spotting an enemy's troops, vehicles, and weapons is relatively easy. But in the shadow war, the enemy hides in remote mountain caves and camps that are difficult to spot from a distance.



Before special operations troops like those in Delta Force and the Green Berets can engage the enemy, these soldiers have to find out where terrorists are concealed, and direct firepower against them before they retreat to new hideouts.

Getting special operations forces onto the ground near terrorist hideouts, which are inconveniently located far from airfields and friendly air bases, won't be easy. Helicopters may not have the range needed to penetrate deep within enemy lines; some new tools may be required to do the job. One item high on the Pentagon's wish list is a long-range plane that can move commandos deep into hostile territory without a developed airstrip, by landing vertically in a field or on a plateau.




Such a plane may look very much like a design recently patented by Lockheed Martin -- a plane that some aviation observers believe is already flying in the black world of secret aircraft. Patent drawings for the unnamed, single-wing plane suggest it has a span of 38 meters, weighs about 25 tons, and uses a pair of 4.5-meter-diameter lifting fans for vertical takeoffs and landings. The plane carries a 12-man special operations force and a Humvee. Its range, assuming its existence, remains unknown, but would be greater than the range of helicopters that usually do such ferry work.

Another long-range aircraft on the drawing boards at DARPA, the military's science and technology research agency, is known as the Quiet Supersonic Platform. This plane would have a 6,000-mile range, fly at Mach 2.4, and deliver a 20,000-pound payload of explosives. A prototype could fly as early as 2005. A plane like this would enable the Air Force to hit targets from distant air bases.




Greatly desired by the military is a hypervelocity cruise missile. When targets are elusive, reducing the "sensor-to-shooter" time is critical. With existing subsonic cruise missiles, the time between spotting the target and hitting it may be as long as an hour. Hypervelocity missiles, flying at Mach 6, can reduce the response time to minutes. Some superfast missiles are already being used by the French and Finnish armies, but they are smaller than cruise missiles. In the United States, DARPA is leading the development effort.

In the very near term, however, the skies over Afghanistan and similar locales will be filled with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which will play a critical role in intelligence gathering. Existing UAVs like Predator and Global Hawk will scan the terrain for terrorist activity, complementing space-based spy satellites. UAVs can transmit data to patrolling combat aircraft within seconds.




"The unmanned aerial vehicle has great merit," says Air Force Col. Bob Stephan, a senior military fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. "It doesn't put humans at risk doing missions like surveillance and reconnaissance."

UAVs might communicate with hidden ground sensors, a capability that is key to an army in the midst of transforming itself into a lighter, more mobile force. "The kind of things you might see are an array of remotely deployed sensors," says Renata Price, assistant deputy chief of staff for research and development at U.S. Army Materiel Command in Alexandria, Virginia. The ground sensors can identify the color, sound, and chemical composition of passersby on remote mountain trails, for example. "Some sensors might be disposable and spread on the ground. Others might be unmanned ground and aerial vehicles," says Price.




One such aerial sensor is a new, very portable UAV that unfolds from a backpack. Called Dragon Eye, the 4.5-pound miniature plane is equipped with video cameras and a GPS locator so it can radio images and its position back to an operator. About 40 Dragon Eyes already exist, with full production scheduled for the end of 2002. Each costs about $5,000.




Dragon Eye is the first of many UAVs that can be used by individual soldiers. DARPA is also developing a flock of UAVs with vertical-landing-and-takeoff capability that can operate autonomously.




"You can think of these vehicles as relocatable sensors," says Sam Wilson, DARPA's program manager for the project. Ducted fans built into the vehicles allow them to hover over a scene, or to perch on a building ledge.




Larger unmanned aircraft may soon be armed with a combination of existing weapons and new ones still under development, say military sources. One new weapon might be a hypervelocity kinetic-energy missile that would deliver a deadlier, more incendiary type of warhead than today's missiles. Armed UAVs have already flown in tests but probably won't be deployed before 2005.




Yet unmanned vehicles can't do everything, cautions Col. Stephan. "Will that platform be able to tell you if an object is a decoy or the real thing? Sometimes, there is no substitute for the human eye. If you're looking for individual people, the overhead platform isn't the best option. You need local operatives for that."




Special forces on the ground soon will find it easier to reconnoiter in hostile territory. By the end of next year, they will have a new night-vision system that will allow them to see objects in the dark as far away as 15 kilometers, says Verle Aebi, president of the Photonics Division of Intevac in Santa Clara, California.




The new system fires a series of 1.9-micron laser pulses that are undetectable by the target. A special camera sensitive to that wavelength detects the individual photons of light to construct a still or video image of the target.




"Picture resolution is sufficiently good so that a soldier can identify vehicle types at long range," says Aebi. "You can tell whether an individual is armed with a rifle or rocket launcher, but you can't identify him specifically." The system's range depends on the terrain, because the laser requires a direct line of sight to its target.




Even though the new night-vision system uses a laser, it does not cause eye damage. At the 1.9-micron wavelength, the laser beam is quickly absorbed by water, even the small amount on the surface of the eye.
Desirable as long-range night vision is, it won't come cheap. Aebi estimates a single portable system that could be carried by a soldier could cost as much as $100,000. The development of the technology has been funded principally by the Department of Defense over the past few years.