Pre-Flight Physics-Based Infrared Synthetic Scene Simulation for Army Aviation Mission Enhancement.

摘要

Aviators rely heavily on Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) imagery. Weather impacted terrain and targets significantly impedes an aircrew's ability to navigate and to rapidly and accurately detect and identify targets. Weather degradation increases target acquisition and identification times, subjecting the aircraft and crew to increased exposure to enemy threats and counterattacks, ultimately decreasing system lethality and survivability. The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), the Air Force Research Agency (AFRA) and the U.S. Army Aviation Test Directorate, Operational Test Command tested the utility of the Infrared Target-scene Simulation Software (IRTSS) System as a mission planning and rehearsal tool for AH-64 Apache attack aviation. IRTSS translates information dominance into readily assimilated situational awareness by fusing tactical intelligence with weather intelligence. Increased situational awareness mitigates risk. and improves aircrew/aircraft lethality and survivability. The IRTSS software running in a commercial web browser generated FLIR scenes for the AH- 64 Target Acquisition Detection Site (TAD S) providing a mechanism for systematically accounting for weather and weather-related effects on the terrain. This technology optimizes for both the anticipated tactical situation and environmental conditions. Using control and test groups of Army aviators, we tested the improvements IRTSS brings to ranking Battle Position (BP) in comparison to using hard copy maps and the Aviation Mission Planning System (AMPS). The tests also measured the change in target detection times using live TADS video following previews of IRTSS scenes.