Helicopter - AMRDEC takes you safely down i brown/whiteout conditions - Curt Lewis

 

Redstone engineers working to allow pilots to see through sand, smoke, fog, and other conditions

Maj. Daniel Hill
An UH-60 Black Hawk medevac helicopter, conducts a limited visibility, or brownout, landing during medevac training in northern Iraq, July 3, 2016.(U.S. Army Photo by Maj. Allen Hill)

When landing, the Army's helicopters are incredibly delicate. If the rotors hit anything, it can lead to a devastating crash.

That's why a condition called "brownout" is so dangerous. It occurs when a helicopter lands in the desert and kicks up an extremely large amount of sand and dirt.

"Our aircraft kick up so much dust that typically when you land in those environments and you take off, you cannot see out the window," says the Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center's Patrick Mason.

When pilots can't see, they have a difficult time landing safely, which can lead to crashes. But brownout isn't just limited to sand. It can also happen in snow, where its called whiteout.

Pilots also have issues seeing in conditions like smoke, fog, clouds, rain, smog, darkness and flat lighting. The Army calls that "degraded visual environment" or DVE. Its defined as "reduced visibility of potentially varying degree, wherein situational awareness and aircraft control cannot be maintained as comprehensively as they are in normal visual meteorological conditions and can potentially be lost."

The AMRDEC uses a series of sensors to create a "virtual" picture around the aircraft to help land. It uses the following sensors;

• Radar
• Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR)
• Cameras
• Neptec Light Detecting and Ranging (LIDAR)

One key benefit Mason sees is medical evacuations, or medevacs. Previously, if conditions were bad, helicopters couldn't take off to get wounded soldiers.

"If you have a wounded soldier, and you're in the golden hour with heavy fog, how do I get a medevac out to them," is the question he poses.

By using the DVE equipment, those helicopters could get to those that need them and save lives. Mason says regardless of conditions, pilots will do everything to rescue those in need.

"They want to go, they will try to go, they want to save that soldier that's on the ground, that is the scared bond between Army aviation and the ground soldiers they support," he says.