Defense - Applications

Patrolling

During his map reconaissance, the patrol commander sets the objective(s). EarthDetails can color all dead ground. He then maximizes his cover by planning routes that stay inside dead ground as much as possible, while noting areas of hightened threat when outside those regions. Conversely, when denying the enemy ground, OPs can be sited to minimize the colored dead ground and to ensure that they are at most pockets and not passages.

During orders briefing, the army has historically used the limited accuracy physical ground model. A good ground model can take a couple of soldiers over an hour to make and will still lack the rigorous accuracy of a computer 3D model.

An EarthDetails model will be able to show where the route is exposed to possible enemy positions so that speed may be compromised in favour of stealth or vice versa.

On the other hand, EarthDetails might be used to gain greater exposure for overt patrols meant at advertising presence.

Stealth aside, in mountainous regions, maintaining straight legs following a compass is nearly impossible. EarthDetails allows selecting a more natural path that continues to bend with the ground, around obstacles, following contours and minimizing elevation change. It can then dump out GPS waypoints for the track.

Siting Weapons

EarthDetails can be used to display the ground that is covered by all direct fire weapons (rifles, machine-guns, rockets, etc.)

For indirect fire assets, it can mark all ground that can be struck AND where friendly eyes have line of sight to adjust the fire.

For so-called flat trajectory weapons (i.e. machine-guns in sustained fire role, EarthDetails can be used with high accuracy LIDAR to identify straight lines along ground that make for ideal grazing fire and FPF tasks.

For a defensive operation, the battalion commander can look at the fireplan effect as described above and shift assets around until all gaps in the defensive are closed, all dead ground is covered, and kill zones are optimized.

For indirect machine-gun fire, which has become somewhat of a lost art, EarthDetails can be used to calculate exact elevation settings. Indirect machine gun fire is a cheap and effective way to get bullets into a window 2 km away from the gun position as the entry team crosses open ground to get into position.

Siting Observation Posts

An effective observation post must have line of sight to as many likely passages as possible. During the map reconaissance, EarthDetails can be used to color code all ground that has line of sight to a candidate point. The commander can then shift the point around and optimize the coverage. This is important also for the acoustic ground radar.

Radio Wave Propogation

EarthDetails can be used to predict signal strength and clarity by analyzing fresnel zones. Units can use this to avoid radio blackout zones when planning routes, siting observation posts, and forking off elements for coordinated tasks (i.e. support and assault elements during raids or attacks).

Handhelds...,

Highlights:

EarthDetails renders over 300 thousand rooftops, irregular high density LIDAR elevation data, and high resolution imagery supplied by OSI Geospatial for an entire county in the NorthWest.
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EarthDetails brings 3D to a TomTom GO In-Car GPS.

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EarthDetails renders the US West Coast with Geological Survey data.

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