Reducing casualties from friendly fire

Published 2 February 2009

With all the advances in information gathering and precision, instances of death and injury from friendly fire still occur; U.S. Army awards BAE Systems and Thales a contract to develop a millimeter wave-based identification system

Death and injury from friendly fire are especially poignant, and the world’s militaries have been working for decades to reduce them. BAE Systems and Thales have now been awarded a contract by the U.S. Army to provide combat identification solutions for ground-combat and combat-support vehicles to minimize the risk of fratricide.

Under a $3.3 million contract from the U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Life Cycle Management Center, the companies will study how millimeter-wave combat identification systems can address issues related to affordability, information security, and platform integration. The contract was awarded as part of the Joint Cooperative Target Identification-Ground program, an effort to develop a low-cost target identification capability for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.

Paul Markwardt, vice-president of identification and surveillance for BAE Systems in Greenlawn, New York, said: “BAE Systems and Thales are working together to develop a systems approach that combines Thales’s expertise in combat identification equipment and BAE Systems’ expertise in platform integration and network-centric combat identification capabilities.”

The contract covers the program’s risk-reduction phase, focusing on ground-to-ground combat identification between military platforms. The program specifies a NATO-standard all-weather, millimeter-wave interrogate-and-respond system for use on U.S. fighting vehicles to signal the presence of friendly vehicles.

According to BAE Systems, the solution must be able to operate during the night and day and not be affected by camouflage or battlefield obscurants.