Unattended Ground Sensors

This article describes Unattended Ground Sensors (UGS) under development as part of the United States Army's Future Combat Systems Program. For information on currently fielded UGS systems, refer to the Current Force UGS Program^[1] or CF UGS.

The CF UGS systems employ various sensor modalities including seismic, acoustic, magnetic, and pyroelectric transducers, daylight imagers and passive infrared imagers to automatically detect the presence of persons or vehicles, and transmit activity reports or imagery via radio-frequency (RF) or satellite communications (SATCOM) links to a remote Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (PED) station. The systems are packaged for concealed emplacement in the field and for long-duration unattended operation.^[2]

The CF UGS Program includes a family of sensors from various companies: Silent Watch, Falcon Watch, Scorpion, OmniSense and OmniSense-Enhanced. The current sources for CF UGS are Harris Corporation (Silent Watch, Falcon Watch), Northrop Grumman-Xetron (Scorpion), McQ Inc (OmniSense, OmniSense-Enhanced).^[1]

Future Combat Systems UGS

There are two types of Unattended Ground Sensors that are being fielded under the United States Army's Future Combat Systems Program, the Urban UGS or U-UGS and the Tactical UGS or T-UGS. The current generation is manufactured by Textron Defense Systems a subcontrator under Boeing.

Tactical Unattended Ground Sensor

T-UGS are small ground-based sensors that collect intelligence through seismic, acoustic, Radiological Nuclear and Electro-Optic means. These sensors are networked devices that provide an early warning system to supplement a platoon size element and are capable of remote operation. To an extent T-UGS will detect, track, classify, and identify personnel and vehicles within its coverage area and report to the FCS Network in near real-time.

T-UGS comprises the following sensor systems:

• The Gateway Node, which is a router and data collector that sends information back to a FCS Network equipped vehicle.
• The Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Node, which is the key component that acquires and tracks personnel, vehicles and aircraft through seismic and acoustic means.
• The Electro-Optic Node obtains information from the ISR node and pans its camera toward the Point of Interest and is able to track and send images through the FCS Network.
• The Radiological Nuclear Node is capable of measuring and reporting gamma dose-rate and accumulated dose from a fallout environment in a tactical battlefield situation. Detected radiological events will be transmitted via a detailed spot report through the Gateway Node to an operator on the FCS network.

Urban Unattended Ground Sensor

For urban areas, the Urban-Unattended Ground Sensors (U-UGS) is used as a surveillance tool during building clearing operations, caves, sewers, tunnels, and other confined spaces. Textron Defense Systems, along with Honeywell, designed these wireless, hand emplaced system of sensors to be lightweight and low cost. The U-UGS network is capable of taking field-of-view images of intruders in all light conditions and transmit images to the FCS Network where immediate recognition of human intruders can be achieved or using a motion detections only sensor to detect intruders when imaging is not needed.

The U-UGS sensors are made up of the following:

• The Gateway bridges the U-UGS sensor field to the FCS network and relays motion alarm and image data. It is capable to be monitored locally by a soldier or remotely through a FCS Network enabled vehicle.
• The Intrusion node basically is a motion sensor that detects movement and is able to tell the difference between animal and human.
• The Imager node is a combination of motion sensor and all light condition capable camera in order to make identification easier.

References

External links

1. iScout
2. OmniSense
3. Falcon Watch
4. Future Combat Systems
5. MicroObserver
6. Harris Corporation
7. McQ
8. Crane Wireless Monitoring Solutions
9. Northrop Grumman
10. Scorpion
11. Textron