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.

FMI: www.missilesandfirecontrol.com, www.boeing.com/rotorcraft/military/ah64d/index.htm