Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Defense News

By the end of next year, the U.S. Army wants to have every company in Iraq and Afghanistan equipped with an eight- to 10-story tower studded with cameras, electro-optical/infrared sensors and radar to scour the combat area for insurgent activities, service officials said.

Some 200 battlezone companies already have one of the 107-foot Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment (RAID) towers, with more than 300 on the way.

“By the end of 2009, we will have everyone fielded. CENTCOM has determined that this is their No. 2 priority, right behind MRAP,” or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, said Maj. Dave Buffaloe, who directs anti-roadside-bomb training for the Army Asymmetric Warfare Office. “BETSS-C is one-third ISR, one-third battle command, and one-third force protection. Working together, the sum is greater than its individual parts.”

The towers have already helped to find and destroy bomb emplacers, Buffaloe said. They are part of a two-year, $1.5 billion program called Base Expeditionary Targeting and Surveillance Sensors-Combined (BETSS-C), approved by U.S. Central Command last fall and run by the Asymmetric Warfare Office.

The Army began putting RAID towers into Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003, but began networking them only when BETSS-C gear began arriving this year.

“In Balad in 2004, I had infantry soldiers operating my RAID tower. They picked up a signal of insurgents praying and then firing a mortar at our position. I did not have any network connectivity with the tank unit on the ground and could not share the data,” Buffaloe said.

“Now, I am looking at a 3-D display with a host of connected sensors. If I see insurgent activity, all I have to do is click and that gives a 10-digit, targetable grid square that I can use to call in an airstrike or feed into the field artillery targeting computer to shoot mortar or artillery rounds. Also, I could radio an Apache and immediately provide the target coordinates.”

The program has been given $356 million by the Joint IED Defeat Organization for 2008. As well, the House Armed Services Committee approved $500 million for BETSS-C in its version of the 2008 supplemental, now under debate in the House and Senate. DoD also requested another $750 million for the program in the 2009 budget.

Initially, towers were placed only at certain forward operating bases. But the counterinsurgency strategy pursued by Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno sent thousands of soldiers out of such bases.

In the summer of 2007, “Odierno said, ‘I want a RAID tower for every joint security station or combat outpost,’” Buffaloe said.

Most of the tower-mounted sensors are made by FLIR Systems, including its Star-Safire III turrets, which can see up to 10 kilometers, Buffaloe said.

“When I was in Afghanistan, I could see all the way into Pakistan 6 kilometers away,” Buffaloe said.

The BETSS-C software, called Terra Sight, gathers video, images and other information from towers, UAVs and ground sensors onto a digital map display for tactical commanders.

“A soldier can see something that is going on in downtown Baghdad and provide that information to commanders so the commander can shoot it, send a patrol or do whatever is necessary,” said Brig. Gen. Tom Cole, who runs the Army’s programs for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors.

Made by Princeton, N.J.-based Sarnoff, Terra Sight also allows soldiers to perform forensic backtracking, looking at recorded feeds from specific locations and times.

“Ninety percent of the insurgent activity you see does not look like insurgent activity in real time. In the case of an IED, they had to build it, they had to recon the site, and they had to arm it. If you catalog that data, you can find out where the weapons cache is or where the bomb-making facility is,” Buffaloe said.

The towers use point-to-point microwave signals to transmit data, images and video. The towers can transmit to blimps.

“A lot of times, the aerostats can stay up in adverse weather when the UAVs have to come down,” Cole said.

BETSS-C can also swap data with an intelligence community database called Distributed Common Ground System–Army and with other DoD community networks.

Systems integration is done by BETSS-C prime contractor Raytheon. Raytheon also makes the Persistent Surveillance and Dissemination System of Systems version 3, which integrates and catalogs data for 20 days at the battalion level.