Sunday, May 17, 2009

Electronic technology for Naval warfare


I know something about Naval technology . . . of the 1970's. I've not kept pace with the latest all-electronic Operations Centers that now control the vessels, and their weapons, and link to other vessels and aircraft and their weapons, and seamlessly control the combat environment.

Defense Tech reports that a new system is showing just how advanced things have become.

Offered by DRS Technologies, [Global Situational Awareness is] a geospatial information system that also allows sharing of data from almost any source — UAV videos, schematics, photos, SAR, IR etc. — on a pretty simple touchscreen. The imported data can be overlaid on the geospatial data and used for mission planning and a host of other applications.

. . .

The console’s hardware has been under development for about three years, the software about one, Hodges said. Currently, the system can handle about 10 applications at the same time, but the company already is working on an even more muscular system that could handle an infinite number of applications.


There's more at the link.

This is pretty amazing stuff! Here's a video demonstrating it in operation.





I feel suddenly obsolete! I remember the bad old days when weapons were sighted by eye, ships did their own thing, even in formation, and one hoped for the best. Nowadays, an electron's likely to zap you before you can blink!

Peter

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