The powerful role of the Commanders Decision Aid (CDS) software and acoustic sensor to increasing ground combat vehicle survivability

Abstract

With the proliferation of diverse anti-tank guided missiles and top attack munitions, ground combat vehicles require the use of multispectral sensors. The issues that arise by adding sensors to these vehicles are the additional cost, size, weight, and power required. Even more critical is the ability of the sensor to provide timely, high-confidence, low-false alarm rate threat detection and classification information to the crew. Amidst a heavy signal clutter battlefield and multiple sensors aboard the vehicle, the concerns are information overload for the crew, being detected by enemy sensors, and quickly depleting limited countermeasure assets by responding to false alarms. The use of infrared and laser warning receivers (IRW, LWR) has been assessed to be very beneficial toward this aim, but not sufficient. Operations analysis has shown that with the addition of an acoustic sensor and decision aid software, crew survivability increases dramatically with low cost. The paper reviews the ground combat vehicle problem space, the data, the complementary data the IRW, LWR, and acoustic sensors provide, and how the Commander’s Decision Aid (CDA) software performs multispectral/multisensor fusion, threat classification, threat prioritization, countermeasures response management, and countermeasures effectiveness assessment via various scenario descriptions.