Beeper could be a life saver,By Greg Bruno ,Times
Herald-Record,[email protected]
West Point - The heart-pounding bass sound thumps in the
background: Somewhere in the desert, U.S. Army soldiers are
preparing to storm an Iraqi hut.
The tempo quickens. Nearby, a black-veiled insurgent kneels over an
artillery tube. A shell is launched. Obliteration is
imminent.
But seconds before the whistling round explodes, tiny pagers in the
pockets of U.S. soldiers begin to beep. The troops flee. Bricks
fly. The hut crumbles in a harmless heap. No one is hurt...
Still in its preproduction phase, the device, creators say, could
become as important as body armor and cover fire in the endless
fight to save soldiers' lives on the battlefield.
"It's a paradigm shift," said Maj. Fernando Maymi, the West Point
assistant professor who helped engineer the system....
Since October 2001, when the Pentagon began tracking the causes of
death of U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, 160 soldiers
have been killed by mortar and rocket fire. More than 2,000 have
been wounded.
The idea for the strike warning system, as it's called, came by way
of Fort Monmouth, N.J., where Paul Manz has spent years developing
systems for warfare. He approached Maymi with the concept about
five years ago.
Here's what they've come up with: On-the-ground radar systems scan
the sky for enemy fire. When a shell is launched, software
estimates where it's going to land.
Radio signals then relay the information to pagers carried by
individual soldiers. Because the system knows where each pager is -
a global positioning chip is implanted in each one - only soldiers
within the blast zone are alerted.
The cost? Less than $500.
Alan Avidan, senior vice president for sales and marketing at
MadahCom Inc., of Sarasota, Fla., said his company is close to
signing a deal with the Army to manufacture the device.
He is especially interested in nonmilitary applications, from
assisted-living alert pagers to devices that could help parents
track children, at amusement parks, for instance.
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