United States Air Force To Invest In “Batman” Technologies For Special Forces
An Air Force program named for and inspired by the comic superhero Batman is bringing together advanced technologies and specialized miniaturized custom cables to equip U.S. Special Forces soldiers for modern warfare, according to a recent MSNBC report.
Started by the Air Force in 2004, BATMAN (an acronymn for Battlefield Air Targeting Man-Aided kNowledge) reconfigures military wire and optic components to modernize the gear that soldiers take with them on covert missions in hostile territories."In the earliest stages when we were coming up with a name for the program, we were perceived as having a lot of gadgets," said Reggie Daniels, BATMAN program engineer at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. "[Batman's] devices allow him to have an advantage. That is what we're trying to do." Fittingly, the motto of the program is "lighter, smarter, deadlier."
Regarding the first objective, elite Air Force soldiers often must lug up to 160 pounds (73 kilograms) of equipment during a mission, Daniels said. This equipment includes communications gear, helmet displays, a headset and a computer, plus a host of batteries and custom cables to keep all these electronics powered in the field. Special forces missions include setting up runways and landing zones as well as retrieving injured people from aircraft downed behind enemy lines. "They have a very dangerous job," said Daniels.
In many cases, Special Forces' outdated gear has overly burdened them, impeded their time-critical decision-making, or simply not been up to the task at hand, he added.
Before recent battlefield incidents spurred reform, Special Forces "were basically using paper and pencil and calculating [their positions in the field] and they had to hobble equipment together that wasn't supposed to be together," said Daniels.
In one particular disaster in Afghanistan, an improperly reinitialized piece of equipment essentially called in an airstrike on the Special Forces' position, killing a number of troops, said Daniels, though he demurred on the details.
The Department of Defense wanted to ensure that this sort of incident would never happen again, and thus BATMAN was born.
The military version of Bruce Wayne's Batcave is a laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. This is where Daniels and his colleagues devise, test and integrate technologies to boost Special Forces' effectiveness.
Although there is no "Batsuit" per se, the BATMAN program does center around what Daniels called the "human chassis," or the idea of the body as a scaffold for all of a mission's appropriate gear. For example, components such as communications antennas which employ miniaturized silicone wires have been placed closer to the torso rather than at distances that can tax a soldier's balance, Daniels said. A key BATMAN achievement has been reducing the weight of carried batteries by 25 percent. New fuel cells powered by methanol actually get lighter as the methanol is consumed, Daniels said, so instead of toting drained batteries, a soldier's load decreases over time.
BATMAN has additionally pioneered the use of a small, chest-mounted computer to provide soldiers with real-time logistical and tactical information. Speech recognition, or telling one's equipment what to do – which is arguably more Inspector Gadget than Batman — is also in the works.
Other technologies brought to bear in the BATMAN initiative include a device that soldiers throw over low-voltage, overhead power lines to draw electricity.
"The time spent by [Special Forces] in the field is limited by how long their batteries last," said Dave Coates, lead test engineer at Ohio-based Defense Research Associates (DRA). "When those batteries die, they've got to come back in." The DRA-developed device, the Remote Auxiliary Power System — though better known as the Bat Hook – was similarly inspired by the Dark Knight. For additional information on wiring and cables for special applications, please visit www.calmont.com to learn more.
