By Geoff Fein
In an attempt to curtail casualties suffered by ground and logistics combat personnel as well as convoy security in Afghanistan, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) has embarked on an effort that will sense, identify, target and respond to enemy fires, according to an ONR official.
The Gunslinger Package for Advanced Convoy Security (GunPACS) takes lessons learned from prior systems (Gunslinger and Wolf Pack), along with input from Marines to help develop the system’s requirements, George Solhan, director, Expeditionary Warfare and Combating Terrorism, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“We are putting that package together using some of the Gunslinger technologies we demonstrated in Iraq, enhancing them, putting in a 30mm cannon on it because Gunslinger was a .30 cal machine gun…putting a better command and control suite on it, and putting it on an advanced logistics truck,” he said.
ONR will then integrate GunPACS onto the truck and test it in country, Solhan added.
“The interesting thing is, the logisticians are all over this because [they are] sustaining a significant number of causalities,” he said.
GunPACS will provide small units with enhanced firepower, hostile fire detection, command and control capability, situational awareness, planning and operations, and an intelligence picture, according to ONR.
Besides ONR, the GunPACS effort includes the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, program manager Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement, Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Dahlgren, Marine Corps Forces Pacific, Experimentation Center (MEC).
One impediment that often surfaces when ONR is trying to quickly respond to a warfighter’s need is that good ideas or urgent requests often surface out of cycle, Solhan said.
“All your money is committed or all of it’s gone. So we try to keep enough flexibility in our portfolio,” he said. “This demand signal came about last spring. We identified some resources, so we were able to put together a consortium, if you will, of donors.”
ONR stays involved with Army and Navy labs in something called: Technology Development Activity (TDA). “These labs enhance our span and control,” Solhan added.
“We are not merely sponsors. We give them direction on a routine basis and they develop expertise in critical mass in specific areas,” he added.
In this case, NSWC, Dahlgren is ONR’s TDA, Solhan noted.
Once ONR has the consortium together, had the request and TDA in place, Solhan said ONR gave the labs a task–“in 30 days develop a systems engineering management plan for an integrated system in order to achieve certain capabilities.”
“They did that,” he said. “We were pretty lucky in doing a quick turn on this. You can’t always do that quick of a turn.”
In its FY ’10 budget, when the rest of Solhan’s funding comes in, ONR is going to pull the trigger on GunPACS, and hopefully have the first demonstration in mid 2010 followed by outside the continental United States (OCONUS) operations and experimentation in late ’10, Solhan said.
ONR will then have an objective capabilities demonstration in early FY ’11, he added. “So early FY ’11 [it will be] in theater.”