Seeing the enemy: urban wars fuel demand for more accurate sensors.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

TEL AVIV, Israel -- Suppliers of high-tech military hardware are developing new sensors that could help troops identify the enemy in close urban quarters.

Israel's military forces, as well as U.S. troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, continue to have difficulties finding enemy combatants inside buildings. Commanders employ a variety of surveillance drones but these do not "see" through walls. As a result, aerial strikes that are aimed at insurgents can end up killing innocent civilians.

Companies here are focusing on mobile surveillance and reconnaissance technologies that can provide soldiers with "quick, actionable information," says Danny Nadri, a retired Israeli Air Force captain, who is now vice president of ODF Optronics, a technology firm in Tel Aviv. The goal, he says, is to "give units the ability to collect their own intelligence."

Israel's military has been fighting in built-up areas for decades, and considers urban surveillance one of its major challenges. "The concept that says most of the fighting is going to take place in cities is well understood in Israel," says Nadri.

ODF Optronics creates technologies that utilize optics to enhance surveillance in urban settings. The goal is to enable the user to have a 360-degree field of view, Nadri says, because in an asymmetric war, soldiers can be exposed to attack from all sides.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

ODF is best known for its eyeball R1 surveillance system, which consists of a hardened sphere that houses a sophisticated camera system and comes with a wireless display unit. The durable eye ball can be thrown over walls, into streets, tunnels, houses or any other place of interest. Once the sphere hits the ground, it establishes a 360-degree video image of the surrounding area and feeds it to operators holding the small display unit. It also features audio and day/night sensors.

ODF received its first major contract for the eyeball in 2006 for $10 million from U.S.-based Remington Technologies, which signed an agreement to represent ODF in the United States. Remington Technologies is a division of the Remington Arms Company Inc., headquartered in Madison, N.C. After purchasing the technology, Remington sold the eye ball system to U.S. law enforcement agencies, Nadri says. The company also sold 300 units to the U.S. Army under the original contract. They were recently shipped to the Middle East.

Although he declined to speak about specific uses by the U.S. military, Nadri illustrated one way it is being used by the Israeli military. "In Israel, we know of daily uses of the eyeball in tunnels."

Israel has had to deal with tunnels built by the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah, as well as Hamas, the Palestinian militant organization. Hezbollah used tunnels in 2006 when it launched rocket attacks against Israel.

Israel defense forces have also identified tunnels dug from the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip into Israel that could be used to carry out attacks against civilian or military targets, according to the Israel national news service Arutz Sheva.

In 2007, ODF released a new family of surveillance products, including a small robot called the "eye drive" and a sensor platform called the omni-directional system. The eye drive is a slightly more sophisticated evolution of the eyeball, Nadri says. The four-wheeled, remotely operated robot can be thrown over walls or onto other surfaces in any terrain and any weather condition. The eye drive can even carry the eyeball on its flat top surface and deploy it in an area of interest. The robot was scheduled to be delivered to Israeli and Irish military forces in January.

The omni-directional system--first introduced in mid-2007--is a sensor platform that is housed inside a hardened pole that can be mounted on top of a vehicle. It provides a 360-degree field of view for the crew inside, which decreases the need for soldiers to leave the vehicle. A five-camera system is housed inside the cylindrical structure that transmits video images to a rugged laptop sitting inside the vehicle. Light and heavy vehicle variants are available. The light version is targeted to law enforcement, whereas the heavy system would be most useful for tanks, armored vehicles and any platform that needs to survive in a harsh environment, Nadri says.

ODF is currently working with the Defense Department's technical support working group and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop new sensors.

"The technical support working group understood that military forces need to see all the world around them" and is working with ODF to meet this need, Nadri says. U.S. Army special operations forces plan to use one of the new sensors, which will feature enhanced processing and resolution.

Another Israeli defense company, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., is also concentrating its efforts on intelligence collection technologies.

"Today, we are focused on what we see in conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan," says Rami Nossem, Rafael's marketing manager for Western Europe.

More specifically, the company is exploring new ways to detect improvised explosive devices. Rafael researchers have looked at ways to locate disruptions in the road where an lED may be planted, says Lova Drori, Rafael's vice president of marketing and business development.

The company has created several countermeasures to combat the wide range of possible IEDs because there are "too many ways they are constructed and detonated," Drori says. Some of the anti-IED technologies have been employed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rafael has also developed a mobile fire detection system for individual soldiers to pinpoint enemy gunfire. Spotlite-M is one of the company's Spotlite family of electro-optical enemy fire detection systems. It uses advanced image processing, a camera system and electro-optical sensors to detect small arms fire, RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) and anti-tank missiles, the company says.

The company also produces shoulder-launched door breaching weapons that troops use to enter suspicious buildings.

"When you are inside a city and you identify a house or apartment and you know there are bad guys, there are three ways to solve the problem," Drori explains. "First, you can bomb it with an airplane. Second, you can try to reach the door and hope that no one on the inside sees you. Third, you can try to operate from a distance" using door breaching technologies.

The U.S. Army recently awarded Rafael a $52 million contract for a mobile door breaching munition called Simon. Also called GREM (grenade, rifle, entry munition), it can be fired from a variety of rifles and is designed to breach a door from 20 meters away, Drori says.

Unlike Rafael's larger door breacher, called Matador, Simon is less destructive and causes "minimum collateral damage," a company news release says. The weapon's warhead has a dome shape and its explosion generates a shock wave, which blasts the door and causes it to yield.

Rafael is concentrating on urban warfare products for forces that are fighting right now in Iraq and Afghanistan, says Drori, but the company believes this is only the beginning. Urban wars "will happen worldwide more and more."

Nadri agrees, saying, "It's very clear that development of products for urban wars is growing and will continue at least for the next 10 years."