Thursday, September 18, 2008

LRAS3 mobile training facility coming to Belvoir

Courtesy photo
A Soldier demonstrates the use of an LRAS3 while atop a humvee. The system identifies enemy targets using heat-sensing technology.

For a Soldier serving in a combat zone, there’s no need to worry. The Long Range Advanced Scout Surveillance System sees all. Day or night.

Now, Fort Belvoir will get an opportunity to host this most advanced piece of military technology when its mobile training facility sets up shop for an open house demonstration starting Tuesday in the parking lot across from the installation’s Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate Building 399.

Developed by the Army during the 1990s, production has soared since 2001, according to John Notte, project leader for the LRAS3. Designed to cut through fog, rain and sandstorms, the system can positively identify an individual’s heat source from more than ten kilometers away, with a 60-meter circulation error probability, Notte said.

The facility is part of an overall improvement in training capability and will visit military installations across the country, including several National Guard locations.

For Notte and others, the purpose of the LRAS3 is very simple: To detect the enemy at any time and in any weather without hinting of one’s location. Advanced training at the mobile center is also straight forward and allows personnel the opportunity to work hands on with a system once used during Middle Eastern surveillance operations.

“Individuals will be trained in not only system operations, but system maintenance and how to utilize the software that accompanies the LRAS3,” Notte said. “Night Vision has programs dealing with how to identify suicide bombers based on their change in body temperature and facial expressions. That software, along with others just like it, works with the LRAS3 platform and gives our Soldiers a tremendous advantage when out in the field.”

Included in the mobile training facility are an interactive multi-media instruction tutorial, as well as technical manuals and computer simulators that act as the real LRAS3. So real-life that many of the images used as background in a computer-generated exercise comes from digital photographs once taken in Iraq, Notte added.

Victor Combes, training team leader for the LRAS3, said it’s virtually impossible to make a mistake inside the training facility because the system has a built-in test drive that alerts it if something is wrong or not working properly. Ordinarily, a typical instruction lasts three days and can be learned by anyone.

Presently, operators for the training facility are hand-picked by Night Vision and consist of retired military personnel with similar backgrounds in surveillance. After stopping at Belvoir, the LRAS3 training facility will be making its way down to Florida for a demonstration with the state’s National Guard.

“In all my years in the military, this is by far the best piece of technology I’ve seen first-hand,” Combes said. “Everyone who has seen it has come away impressed with its clarity and the distance it’s able to cover. The capabilities of a LRAS3 are endless.”