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Award-Winning Technology Improves Air-Drop Targeting
Award-Winning Technology Improves Air-Drop Targeting
September 29,2008.
Wind-forecast
software from NOAA that improves the target accuracy of an
aircraft drop system up to 70 percent and is now being used
in both Iraq and Afghanistan has won a federal technology
transfer award for four scientists at NOAA's
Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder.
The
software and drop system can be used for releasing almost
any cargo from an airplane into a target area: water over
a blazing wildfire, food to a famine-stricken population,
or supplies, tanks, and Humvees into a war zone.
John
McGinley, John Smart, Linda Wharton, and Daniel Birkenheuer
won NOAA's Technology Transfer Award for successfully developing
and transferring the wind analysis and prediction scheme to
Planning Systems, Inc. (PSI), a military contractor based
in Reston, Va., for use in its Precision AirDrop System (PADST).
The awards were presented at a ceremony on October 22 at NOAA's
Silver Spring, Md., campus.
"Reducing
the landing zone size makes recovery less dangerous for ground-based
military units, who often cross hazardous areas to reach supply
drops," said McGinley. "More accurate targeting also allows
the aircraft to fly at higher, safer altitudes."
The
U.S. Air Force uses the system for dropping U.S. Army cargo
and an occasional paratrooper into both Iraq and Afghanistan,
according to McGinley. Inaccurate wind forecasts are the main
culprit in missed targets for dropping supplies and other
items from high altitudes, especially in mountainous terrain.
The U.S. military faced this problem in aiming supply drops
during the Bosnian war. Cargo intended for a small Bosnian
valley sometimes landed in an adjacent Serb valley by mistake,
according to McGinley.
In
1998 the Department of Defense started a program to develop
a better system for air-dropping parachute payloads accurately
and safely from high altitudes. PSI, a contractor working
on the problem, asked NOAA for help.
McGinley's
team focused on reducing the wind error. The result was new
NOAA software that runs on a laptop computer onboard the aircraft.
Called the Local
Analysis and Prediction System, LAPS creates a weather
snapshot using data from ground instruments, balloons, aircraft,
satellites, and PSI-developed dropsondes - atmospheric observing
devices dropped from aircraft. The improved wind forecasts
in the final product reduced the average error distance between
the center of the drop zone and the actual landing position
from 5,000 to 1,300 feet, or 70 percent.
Better
airdrop targeting can benefit civilian needs as well as military
missions. A new firefighting method proposed by PSI and its
partners would drop large containers of water over fires at
night. If the method is implemented, accurate drops could
mean the difference between dousing wildfire flames and soaking
an area already charred.
PSI
is now part of the QinetiQ North America Technology Solutions
Group. The U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research Development and
Engineering Center sponsored the LAPS software development
and testing with U.S. Air Force and other Department of Defense
sponsors. Draper Laboratory was the lead software integrator
for PADS.
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