On 2 December 2011, the Swedish Defence Research Agency, FOI, together with Graz University of Technology, TU Graz, delivered the results of the 3D Positioning study to the European Defence Agency (EDA).
In modern warfare, soldiers need to know exactly their positions for force tracking, to provide a joint operational picture, to call for joint fires, to coordinate with other forces effectively and safely and to navigate accurately to carry out their missions.
While these challenges can be met in many outdoor scenarios with Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), there are currently no tools or devices that allow today’s soldiers in operations to accurately know their position or to navigate within buildings or in narrow streets or canyons. The 3D Positioning System study, which originated in the Project Team 21st Century Soldier Systems (PT 21st CSS), was launched in late 2010 to address this capability gap – a requirement that becomes most evident considering that the amount of people living in urban areas worldwide is increasing, and that future conflicts are likely to occur more frequently in urban terrain.
The study was strongly supported by capability and research experts from Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Finland and Sweden. The system, which proposes a subsystem solution including contributions from inertial sensors, magnetometers and barometric sensors in combination with sensor fusion approaches, was evaluated and demonstrated during a field test in late August 2011 in St. Luzisteig, Switzerland, under dynamic and realistic conditions.
The results, which are available to participant Members States (pMS), show that a 3D Positioning system based on the proposed technology and integrated with a Global Navigation Satellite System receiver has the potential to provide a much needed capability by enabling a light, robust, accurate soldier positioning in all environments. “The key military requirements in terms of soldier adaptability and accuracy – for reasonable time spans – can be fulfilled at an affordable cost in the near future”, said Jonas Nygards, Technical Project Officer at EDA.
Benjamin Fuchs, Engagement Support Officer at EDA and responsible for the PT 21st Century Soldier System, stated “the study will be included in the upcoming programmes of work for a complete soldier Command & Control, Computers, Communications and Intelligence (C4I) system within soldier modernisation efforts at EDA.”