Comanche Helicopter in the Digital Battlefield

In its armed reconnaissance role, the Comanche has the required communications and processing power and, by virtue of its reduced signature, the survivability and mobility to act as the most forward command and control node on the battlefield. The Comanche’s second generation sensors will provide critical information on enemy forces in terms of numbers, composition, status and intent. The Comanche’s integrated CNI avionics (ICNIA) will connect it to the combined arms team for real time reporting of enemy and friendly force position and status, battle damage assessment and logistics needs. The situational awareness capability correlates the Army’s Tactical Internet data and multi-force Link-16 net data with the on-board system data to provide a consolidated Tactical Situation Display (TSD) overlaid on the Comanche’s digital map. The Comanche can disseminate the correlated threat information back onto the digital nets as well as directly to a team member. The advanced glass cockpit design for the Comanche allows the pilot and copilot/gunner to enter commands, target handoff data and reports into the computer for digital communication to other team members. This paper will document the basic Comanche architecture and how the digital communication capability is integrated. It will review the end-to-end processing of a digital message and how it represented to the Comanche operators. Finally, it will show how the results of this analysis provide a preliminary concept of operation for the digital communication capability and how that will be used to refine the digital message information that will be transmitted between the Comanche and other platforms.