AF Lab Targets Friendly-Fire Deaths

[unhappycamper]

AF Lab Targets Friendly-Fire Deaths
Dayton Daily News | November 30, 2007

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE -- An Air Force Research Laboratory team is working to create improved portable communications and battery gear that the researchers hope will save the lives of Air Force personnel.

Specifically, they hope the devices will eliminate communication mistakes that have been known to result in U.S. warplanes dropping bombs on American ground forces. Such a tragedy in Afghanistan resulted in the team's creation.

The Battlefield Air Operations Kit team focuses on making equipment more effective, easier to use and less taxing on combat controllers, who go behind enemy lines to scout out strategic targets and call in their location coordinates to U.S. warplanes so the targets can be bombed.

The goal is to ensure that the controllers can work safely and survive to return from their hazardous assignments, said Capt. David Miller, assigned to the AFRL program at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Along with the enemy, controllers must cope with fatigue, weather conditions, equipment limitations and working in an unfamiliar environment.

The AFRL specialists have worked with private contractors to develop:

- Lightweight batteries to reduce by half the weight of the 35 pounds of batteries that combat controllers now must carry. The batteries must remain operational for at least a 72-hour mission, if not longer.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,157305,00.html?wh=wh