With an urgent demand from soldiers in the field to be able to collect as much information about the enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Product Manager Prophet (PdM Prophet) has recently secured a system that will assist in meeting that need for battlespace awareness.
On Oct. 20, Brig. Gen. Tom Cole, Program Executive Office Intelligence Electronic Warfare & Sensors along with Lt. Col. Jim Ross, PdM Prophet witnessed the roll out of the first Prophet Enhanced vehicle from General Dynamics in Scottsdale, AZ.
Prophet Enhanced was one of the systems obtained by the Army under a short timeline as a part of the Secretary of Defense directed Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) surge dedicated to providing a complete ISR picture to Coalition Forces and offering an avenue for staying ahead of enemy activities.
“The Prophet Enhanced effort was chosen to be a part of the ISR surge to in effect add a more robust signal intelligence (SIGINT) gathering capability over the current Prophet system, as well as putting it on a different platform which is an MRAP vehicle that could be deployed to any theater and be more survivable against IEDs,” said Ross.
The first set of Prophet Enhanced vehicles will be housed on a Panther variant of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle that are scheduled to be delivered by May 2010. “Those vehicles will go through a limited test and be fielded as part of a future deployment to a unit starting in February. Fielded units will go through training over the spring and will probably deploy sometime in the summer to early fall of next year with the first vehicles,” added Ross.
In addition to the Panther, the M1165 HMMWV will be outfitted with the Prophet Enhanced system, which will offer ground forces options as to which vehicle to utilize depending on the environment.
The Army and industry worked on an aggressive timetable in order to ensure the first Prophet Enhanced could be delivered within 270 days. “It was an incredible effort by the government and contractor team to meet this timeline,” noted Ross. “The government had to be very clear in the requirements we needed and when they were needed by, while the contractor team had to work hard in a huge integration effort because there was some government furnished equipment that was provided to the contractor to integrate.”
The newest iteration of Prophet will also include a software upgrade from version 1 to version 2, of the Single SIGINT software baseline (S3B). “Version 2 which has a lot more enhancements over version 1; reduces some of the complexity caused by integration, because now an operator doesn’t have to worry about how to set up all the individual pieces as the S3B software will help in that capability,” said Ross. “By reducing the complexity for the operator they can concentrate on doing their mission rather than configuring the system.”
In designing Prophet Enhanced, a kitting strategy was implemented that will allow the system to be easily interchanged between multiple platforms should the need arise. With advanced planning, an A-kit can be designed and installed on a vehicle that will serve as the housing unit for the B-kit, which is the Prophet Enhanced system itself. “This strategy allows us to take a vehicle agnostic solution; meaning, if the Army says there is a particular vehicle that needs to have Prophet integrated we can stay ahead of the time curve by obtaining design information for the vehicle and creating an appropriate A-kit and allowing the B-Kit to be added much more quickly,” said Ross.
Prophet Spiral 1 is currently fielded to Soldiers in theater and supporting missions right now, and Prophet Enhanced will greatly upgrade those capabilities by building upon a proven technology, added Ross.