Marines using small tablets to drop big artillery fire

The Marine Corps won’t be using your father’s system of calling fire support in battles anymore.

The service is unveiling a new system that uses the simplicity of a tablet and the complexity of satellite imagery to call in fire support to Marines in the field.

The Target Handoff System (THSv2) allows Marines to “use technology as a digital map solution in their hands and basically be able to gain strategic advantage on the battlefield immediately while identifying enemy targets and using that information in real time to be able to prosecute using ground based fires and close air support,” said Capt. Jesse Hume, the THSv2 project officer.

What Marines see on their tablet is very similar to what one might see on Google Earth, a satellite image of the topography of an area.

The tablet allows Marines to see the most up-to-date imagery and to use any video from a manned or unmanned system.

The Marine on the ground an simply look at the tablet, get images and video from multiple sources and then send that information to the fire support center or directly to an aircraft to deliver support, Hume said.

“It’s just that instantaneous situational awareness, which is going to make our air controllers or our forward observers just that much more efficient on the battlefield,” Hume said.

THSv2 is the second version of the system. The current handoff system is more Windows-based and is much heavier than the THSv2.

“There’s a lot more components that just add on the additional weight. The observers right now can used that for mission planning… but it really isn’t used for dismounted operations, so for guys on patrol they’re relying on quick math work and doing everything manually,” Hume said. “With a drag of the finger you can start use and manipulating your final attack headings, which are basically safety measures to ensure that the aircraft is coming in at the right angles and not over friendlies.”

THSv2 lets Marines in the field share the actual calculations with fire support, which makes for quicker approval.

Marines aren’t using any cellular service or Wifi to make THSv2 work, however.

Everything is done over combat network radio, meaning Marines have to lug cables to attach the tablet, the radio itself and the radio’s power source.

To develop the THSv2, the Marine Corps changed its procurement process a bit compared to the previous version. The first version relied on a single contractor. For version two, the Marines used two different military labs that were working on digital mapping.

The service wanted both of the labs’ work.

“We wanted to leave it up to the smart guys in the government labs to figure out how to integrate and they basically rewrote their science and technology effort into a very sustainable modular architecture for software,” Hume said. “Now instead of having to go through contracting actions we can go through our normal access to government labs and we can get rapid development happening and obviously get it to the warfighter very quickly.”

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