Land Environment Air picture provision (LEAPP)

In today’s complex battlefield environments, where multiple assets must be carefully coordinated to work together for best effect, achieving the right level of situational awareness is key. And achieving ‘decision quality’ near real-time data on the Land Commander’s air picture would give him a crucial advantage. That’s because being able to see a clear air picture showing precisely where assets are in relation to those of allies and enemies gives a commander the ability to plan accordingly and strike effectively, to get the very most from this available equipment and avoid ‘blue on blue’ incidents.

Team Athena’s approach is through the provision of a robust and flexible core control and communications system to which various ground-based sensors can be added to meet the surveillance requirements of the land component.

This core element has sufficient growth potential to readily accept additional sensors or air picture data information as and when required.

In keeping with the recently published Defence Industrial Strategy, Team Athena put together a consortium that would provide a world class solution while maintaining UK sovereignty and national security. The team knew from the beginning that to be effective they needed to fuse the Recognised Air Picture (RAP) from the air, Link 16 from the sea and information from additional ground sensors, while also offering current updates to the operators. The question was how could they draw together all these sources in the core capability and be able to pass the right set of data to each user to meet his needs in near real time?

The answer lies in team Athena’s bespoke fusion and information management software. By using some of the very best UK developed software and merging it with proven US technology Team Athena created an open and agile system, with a core capability prepared to meet changes to requirements, technology and equipment.

Working with team members BAE Systems, Advanced Systems Architectures, SML and QinetiQ as well as software experts in the US allowed the team to show how the core capability could be used for planning, monitoring and controlling the air picture.

Lockheed Martin - INSYS integrated the capability into the demonstration platform control node. The production solution will see it carried by the go-anywhere Viking all-terrain vehicle which can be easily operated in the field.

Working with Ericsson the team included the ‘Giraffe’ agile multi-beam active radar and our own Lockheed Martin Silent Sentry as the key sensors. These can combine with assets such as the AWACS fleet which, via Link 16, can also contribute to the air picture. Silent Sentry uses passive technology to construct a picture. It has no transmitter of its own but can effectively gather transmissions from existing sources - civil or military - and use them for its own ends.