FTI has a great deal of recent experience working in the mission
planning domain for the Army and Navy. We have an ongoing effort
with the Army’s Comanche
Program Management Office and the
Aviation Mission Planning System Program
Management Office to develop
mission planning software specific
to the RAH-66 Comanche low-observable armed reconnaissance helicopter.
This effort includes developing
general Comanche mission planning software, an auto-router that
produces maximum survivability routes between waypoints in real-time,
and a “tactics expert system” to aide the pilot in
attack/observation position planning, fire/no-fire zone planning,
and tactics/course of action selection. We have another ongoing
effort for the Office of Naval
Research and the Navy
SEALs to develop
an auto-router for SEAL’s
Tactical Decision Support System that produces
optimal insertion and extraction routes for Special Operations
Forces helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. Finally,
we recently completed a feasibility study and preliminary design
of a passive terrain following system for the Army
Aviation and Missile Command and have a pending contract with
them to develop and test a prototype passive
terrain following system for Army
and Special Operations Forces helicopters. Through these efforts
we have accumulated extensive experience with NIMA’s Defense
Terrain Elevation Data (DTED) and Vector Product Format (VPF) for
obstacles, PFPS, FalconView, and other GIS systems. View the screen
shots below for examples of some of our mission planning and navigation
implementations, or visit our PathFinder™ page
for information on our auto-routing software engine.
Comanche Planner
This picture
shows a Comanche Planner generated route that limits the number of
waypoints to simplify navigation while still enhancing
survivability.
Comanche Planner uses predefined and user selected criteria to
find the best locations to either observe or to engage a position.
Criteria
includes range visibility, terrain masking, altitude, solar and
lunar lighting,
and background.
The teal route shows how our auto-router makes use of mountainous
terrain in order to minimize detection. There are no threat
detection ranges in the current path.
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This picture shows how our auto-router alters the same route
with the appearance of a new threat.
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This picture depicts in blue other locations
an aircraft can see from a particular position and elevation.
Our intervisibility calculations are complex and not only take
into account the 5/4 earth model if the Comanche has radar
capability, but also consider aspect angle.
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This
shows which aircraft should fire at particular targets. The
battle planner also tells the pilots which weapons to employ
against specific targets. Comanche1 and Comanche2 should not
fire at the SA-3 because neither have visibility to the threat.
(There is a ‘visibility required’ checkbox for
each aircraft, which tells our algorithm if the aircraft needs
visibility to fire at targets.) The X represents a possible
fraticide if Comanche2 fires a hellfire or stinger at the KA-50.
The – represent the target is not in range for the aircraft
to employ that particular weapon. Also note the circles around
the targets and aircraft represent the weapon’s range.
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Portable Flight Planning System (PFPS) Integration
FTI's autorouter technology has been incorporated in the Portable
Flight Planning System (PFPS). In the FalconView window, an FTI developed "layer
editor" is used to identify waypoints
and to activated the FTI autorouter. FTI is developing a similar
capability for the Navy to assist in mission planning for SEAL teams.
FTI autorouters based on our PathFinder™ technology can be applied
to a broad range of applications where terrain masking and threat
avoidance are important.
RouteStep
FTI is developing an automatic ground routing application called RouteStep.
RouteStep will be capable of finding minimum-energy routes over various types
of terrain. RouteStep evaluates terrain elevations and surface types to find
optimal routes that can avoid high elevations, steep terrain, and water.
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