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Lockheed Martin has is featuring a new advanced information-sharing PDA system at its booth at AUSA 2009.
The DisOPS system, designed for small unit operations, features a secure wireless ad-hoc network that allows any number of units to share audio/visual information, notes and maps with only a 10-second lag time. The system was demonstrated recently at the Empire Challenge technology exercise in China Lake, Calif., the company said.
"We supplied units from the California National Guard with DisOPS for this year's Empire Challenge," said Gerry Mayer, director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratory. "During the exercise, JTACs [Joint Terminal Attack Controllers] were able to use the system to call in strikes from F-16s for close air support."
DisOPS permits operators to color-code locations, mark routes on maps and make free-hand notes, store photos and areas of interest, and apply icons for rendezvous points. It can also take a photo of a suspect and send it others in the network.
During a mission, it has 15-hour battery life, a cursor-on-target selection with 10-digit or latitude/longitude location, and its memory can be wiped clean remotely if a soldier is captured. It has also been integrated with the EARS shot-detection system, and will upload the location of a shot to the map display.
"The system can use three different comms networks," Mayer said. "It works on a short range WiFi network up to one kilometer between PDAs. It can also be hooked up to radios or satellite cell phones to give it a global reach. It can also send information through the data channel of a standard PRC-148 radio."
An earlier version of the system was used during the 2009 Presidential Inauguration by U.S. Park Police. With 1 million people in attendance at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., police used DisOPS to share information quickly and efficiently.
"When they were confronted with a lost child, they would take a picture of the child, write the kid's name on the photo and e-mail it to every officer in the area," Mayer explained. "As soon as the parents came for help, they had the exact location of the child."
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