An upgraded plastic target that looks like a tank, has been developed by collaborating Army offices and is expected to save the Army hundreds to thousands of dollars in training and testing missions, service officials said.
“We have right here a T-72 (tank target). Once we are done with the program it’ll resemble closely an actual T-72 radar cross section and infrared signature,” said Eric Hoffman, a program manager from the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) Targets Management Office.
For the final element of realism, the target is mounted on a light utility vehicle chassis similar to those used by golf course and park maintenance personnel and the whole kit is converted to be driven by remote control.
In a joint project between the Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation–Program Manager Instrumentation, Targets and Threat Simulators-Targets Management Office, and the Army Test and Evaluation Command’s Systems Engineering Directorate at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), N.M., engineers took a set of simple plastic targets normally used for acquisition and gunnery exercises, and upgraded them to become realistic, mobile, remotely operated target vehicles.
To best represent a threat vehicle for test and training events, a vehicle made by another foreign country is required, but they cost the test agency not only funds to buy it but also to keep it operational. Additionally, some tests require the vehicles to be destroyed as part of the event.
Not only does the test vehicle need to be the right variant and operational, but in some cases it must also be able to be driven by remote control. Typically for advanced testing or training, the surrogate target must look like an enemy foreign vehicle on radar or by thermal imaging.
Starting with a simple plastic tank model that’s commercially available for use as a static target, project engineers created something more real, but without the expense of actually buying a foreign tank.
The U.S. Army has a history with fake tanks–in World War I and II–used for training, some testing and deception, and today has dummy M1 Abrams tanks for various purposes.
While the basic target has the outward appearance of a tank in its off the shelf form, engineers needed to do more to test today’s advanced sensors and weapon systems.
So they took the target to the next level, installing heating units to give the target a proper thermal signature for testing heat-sensing equipment. Also, metal stripping, foil and plating were installed to make the vehicles appear on radar properly.
The end result of the work will be an inexpensive family of targets that can be used for a wide variety of testing or training.
“The environment that we live in now we’re looking for threat targets that are cost effective, and the things that we are working on are a lot more inexpensive then using the real thing,” Hoffman said. “This gives testers the opportunity to go out and say ‘OK, I can actually test against something that is equal to what the real thing looks like but costs tremendously less.”
While the exact cost of a test can vary widely depending on the exact requirements, the cost difference of using one of these remotely operated targets could offer savings of as much as thousands of dollars.
While the initial target developed at WSMR is representative of a Russian T-72 tank, by replacing the outer shell the target can also be used to represent other armored vehicles like the Russian BMP infantry combat vehicle, or the BTR amphibious armored personnel carrier, the offices said in a statement.
Next the target will go to Edwards AFB, Calif., where it will be evaluated to ensure it is an accurate representative of the intended vehicles before it is used to evaluate a new system under test there.