New Generation Electronics Include Naval Capability
Aero-News Analysis by Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien
Could we one day see Apache helicopters in Navy grey -- or Coast
Guard glossy white? The idea is less outrageous than you might
think. According to the insider tipsheet "Inside the Pentagon," a
new Block III version of the attack helicopter's sophisticated
Longbow radar will add a third mode to the radar -- one
optimized for playing cat-and-mouse with surface vessels.
At present, the radar has air-to-air and air-to-ground modes.
The third mode is being called "Maritime and Littoral Mode" by its
developers.
The newsletter quoted Col. Derek Paquette, the Army's project
manager, as telling a media roundtable, "Today you have an
air-to-air mode and air-to-ground
mode... [W]hen you know you're going to be operating over water you
would go [into] ... the littoral and maritime mode."
In each mode, the radar can distinguish and prioritize targets
and threats. Adding the third mode is a software-only upgrade to
Longbow Block III requiring no new hardware development.
The sophisticated sensor suite, manufactured by Lockheed Martin
and Northrop Grumman joint venture Longbow LLC, is a descendant of
the Lockheed Martin Electro Optical Sensor System (EOSS) which was
to light up the CRTs of the cancelled RAH-66 Comanche. There's some
irony in that, as one of the nails in the Comanche's coffin was the
Apache's unchallenged place atop the world attack-helicopter
heap.
The radar's input is displayed to the Apache's crew of two
through the Arrowhead Modernized Target Acquisition and Designation
Sight (M-TADS) and, by night or in conditions of degraded
visibility, the Modernized Pilot Night Vision Sensor (M-PNVS). The
Block III M-TADS actually integrates radar, FLIR and
image-intensified optical to find and highlight targets for the
crew.
By weighting the input of all the sensors, including multiple
wavelengths of radar and both visible-spectrum full-color and
multiple wavelengths of infrared-spectrum light, and "fusing" all
the data into a single picture, the aircraft actually extends the
vision of the pilots beyond the limits of human physiology, almost
without regard to illumination (day or night) or obscuration by
weather, smoke, etc. The system can highlight targets or
target-identifying markers used by ground troops, again beyond the
limits of human visibility.
The Longbow system tracks up to 128 targets and prioritizes the
16 most significant threats for the crew. The Block III system does
all this, and reduces system weight as well. The Army believes this
upgrade will keep the Apache viable as a combat helicopter for as
much as thirty more years.
Finally, a major component of Longbow Block III is integration
with the network-centric Army of the 21st Century, allowing it not
only to pool and fuse the data from its own sensors, but to extend
that by becoming a node of a Brigade Combat Team. In this case the
Apache's sensors can extend the vision of the ground unit, and the
ground unit's capabilities, which might include such things as
UAVs, sensors on Stryker vehicles, or Future Combat Systems, extend
the vision of the Apache. Indeed, the potential exists for a Block
III Apache to take control of a UAV on the battlefield.
To substitute integration with a naval task force's or homeland
security command, control and communications network would be, like
adding the maritime radar mode, a matter of software
development.
Of course, it is a long way from a maritime capability to
maritime employment of the Apache. the powerful helicopter has
never been navalized for any customer; however, the eight-ton
aircraft's current provisions for rapid dismantling for air
transport might go a long way towards development of a shipboard
version. But even if flown from shore points, the Apache offers
more speed, sensor capability and -- it goes without saying --
firepower, than current maritime patrol and border enforcement
helicopters.
The Apache program came to Boeing in the purchase of McDonnell
Douglas; McDD acquired it from Hughes Aircraft, where it was the
only unsullied commercial success ever in Hughes's long history of
innovative airplanes and helicopters (the OH-6 program was a
technical success, but a fiscal fiasco that cost Hughes about
double their contract price to manufacture, and ended, as so many
other Hughes programs did, amid contentious Congressional
hearings).
Boeing's hope is that its inherited rotorcraft continues to find
foreign buyers to keep AH-64 production going (most helicopters for
the US Army are rebuilds). The relatively straightforward addition
of maritime capability to the Apache indicates just how versatile
the software-based systems of the latest Apaches can be.
Apaches are in service with the US, the UK, Netherlands, Greece,
Israel, Japan, Kuwait, amd Singapore -- all nations that have
littoral or maritime frontiers. All Apache operators either bought
Longbow Apaches, or are upgrading their helicopters to Longbow
capability.