thedrifter
10-05-07, 11:24 AM
New runway lights visible only with NVGs
By James Hannah - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Oct 5, 2007 7:19:34 EDT
DAYTON, Ohio — As the pilots of a C-130 transport plane and a Huey helicopter were preparing for a night landing on a dirt airstrip, they were able to spot the runway lights from 15 miles away — but only they could see them.
The portable lights were in covert mode, visible only to those wearing night-vision goggles.
The landing exercises at Fort McCoy, Wis., were designed to test the prototype lights developed by researchers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
“It went beautifully,” said Sharon Dixon, a psychologist at Wright-Patterson who evaluated the effectiveness and safety of the system.
Dixon said the pilots believed they would have seen the lights from 25 miles away if not for the interference of lights from nearby homes and highways.
The new runway lights were designed to help guide military aircraft in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where quickly established runways may be short, unpaved and in hostile territory.
A handful of researchers spent three years developing the $850,000 system. They are currently shopping the system among the military branches to see who can use it.
Lighted runways and aircraft lights serve as beacons for insurgent snipers, said Lt. Col. Nate Thomas, a fighter pilot with the Ohio National Guard 178th Fighter Wing in Springfield.
Thomas said Thursday that he was fired upon numerous times as he approached runways for nighttime landings in Iraq when he was there from November to January.
“You’re just scanning, looking for muzzle flashes or tracer fire,” said Thomas, 42, of suburban Columbus. He said having infrared runway lights invisible to everyone but the pilots, crew and airfield operators would be “incredibly useful.”
“The system has got a lot of validity,” he said. “It’s a huge safety increase.”
The biggest challenge with using new technology is how to get the benefit without giving the same benefit to the enemy, said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based think tank that follows military issues.
“A lighting system which our pilots can see but the enemy cannot see is a good solution to that problem,” Thompson said. “With this new technology, the Air Force will be able to land at airstrips which in the past would be too dangerous to use, if not impossible even to find.”
For now, the system is being housed at Wright-Patterson. Surrounded by coils of cable and standing atop silver metal boxes, the individual lights are white — clustered like honeycombs inside clear glass covers — as well as blue, red and green.
The system was born several years ago when the Air Force discovered that the only portable runway lights they had were part of an emergency system developed for temporary use during power outages, said Peter Marasco, an engineer who helped develop the new process.
“They found there was only one available portable airfield lighting system in the Air Force inventory that they could rely on for the kinds of missions they were looking into,” Marasco said. “And it was not particularly reliable.”
That system uses conventional incandescent lighting. The new system uses light-emitting diode technology, which is more efficient, uses less energy and lasts as much as 50 times longer than incandescent lighting.
The new system is powered by a smaller generator that is much lighter and easier to transport than the generator that powers the conventional system.
Ellie
By James Hannah - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Oct 5, 2007 7:19:34 EDT
DAYTON, Ohio — As the pilots of a C-130 transport plane and a Huey helicopter were preparing for a night landing on a dirt airstrip, they were able to spot the runway lights from 15 miles away — but only they could see them.
The portable lights were in covert mode, visible only to those wearing night-vision goggles.
The landing exercises at Fort McCoy, Wis., were designed to test the prototype lights developed by researchers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
“It went beautifully,” said Sharon Dixon, a psychologist at Wright-Patterson who evaluated the effectiveness and safety of the system.
Dixon said the pilots believed they would have seen the lights from 25 miles away if not for the interference of lights from nearby homes and highways.
The new runway lights were designed to help guide military aircraft in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where quickly established runways may be short, unpaved and in hostile territory.
A handful of researchers spent three years developing the $850,000 system. They are currently shopping the system among the military branches to see who can use it.
Lighted runways and aircraft lights serve as beacons for insurgent snipers, said Lt. Col. Nate Thomas, a fighter pilot with the Ohio National Guard 178th Fighter Wing in Springfield.
Thomas said Thursday that he was fired upon numerous times as he approached runways for nighttime landings in Iraq when he was there from November to January.
“You’re just scanning, looking for muzzle flashes or tracer fire,” said Thomas, 42, of suburban Columbus. He said having infrared runway lights invisible to everyone but the pilots, crew and airfield operators would be “incredibly useful.”
“The system has got a lot of validity,” he said. “It’s a huge safety increase.”
The biggest challenge with using new technology is how to get the benefit without giving the same benefit to the enemy, said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based think tank that follows military issues.
“A lighting system which our pilots can see but the enemy cannot see is a good solution to that problem,” Thompson said. “With this new technology, the Air Force will be able to land at airstrips which in the past would be too dangerous to use, if not impossible even to find.”
For now, the system is being housed at Wright-Patterson. Surrounded by coils of cable and standing atop silver metal boxes, the individual lights are white — clustered like honeycombs inside clear glass covers — as well as blue, red and green.
The system was born several years ago when the Air Force discovered that the only portable runway lights they had were part of an emergency system developed for temporary use during power outages, said Peter Marasco, an engineer who helped develop the new process.
“They found there was only one available portable airfield lighting system in the Air Force inventory that they could rely on for the kinds of missions they were looking into,” Marasco said. “And it was not particularly reliable.”
That system uses conventional incandescent lighting. The new system uses light-emitting diode technology, which is more efficient, uses less energy and lasts as much as 50 times longer than incandescent lighting.
The new system is powered by a smaller generator that is much lighter and easier to transport than the generator that powers the conventional system.
Ellie