Utilisation of Automotive Commercial Sensing Technologies within Military Land Systems to Increase Survivability

This paper presents the results from the 1st year of a 2-year UK Ministry of Defence funded research project analysing the feasibility and applicability of Commercial of the Shelf (COTS) automotive sensing technologies for Mounted Close Combat (MCC). The aim of this research is to understand if and how COTS automotive sensing technologies could be utilised to increase MCC crew’s situational awareness. One current military area of operations is within diverse and complex urban environments, these operating environments can be described as Congested, Cluttered, Contested, Connected and Constrained (the 5C’s). Outside the military environment, over the past 10 years significant advances within the automotive sector regarding sensing technologies and autonomous systems have increased exponentially. Driven by enormous investment from the commercial / private automotive Tier 1 and 2 suppliers, with recent years seeing many government sponsored, technology accelerator programs. The results of this significant global investment have produced low cost, advanced, sensing technologies and sensing capabilities, which could potentially be exploited within military land platforms to increase situational awareness. The results of two discrete studies are presented within this paper, Study 1, provides an analysis of COTS automotive sensing technologies through a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis, with additional technical assessments to provide further indications of applicability to MCC. The conclusions and results of these analyses are then used to develop a selection of use cases for crews operating MCC. Study 2 presents a practical experiment designed to demonstrate the integration of Controller Area Network (CAN) COTS sensing technologies within Def Stan 23-009 Generic Vehicle Architecture (GVA) and STANAG 4754 NATO Generic Vehicle Architecture (NGVA). Finally, concluding remarks are provided highlighting the benefits and constraints for utilising COTS sensing technologies within GVA / NGVA compliant military land platforms with additional recommendations.