AMMAN, Jordan ― Exceptionally notable at last week’s Special Operations Forces Exhibition in Jordan was the large presence of local and international light tactical products to support special ops fighting the wave of regional threats.

“The new type of threats faced today requires the use of light vehicles able to meet the demand of the countries confronting terrorism in an asymmetric environment where the assemblage of terrorist groups is becoming more concentrated in residential areas,” said Abdallah Al Salman, marketing and communication manager with the Jordan-based KADDB Investment Group.

Forecast International analysts predict the global light, wheeled vehicle market will produce more than 36,000 units worth at least $30.9 billion through 2024 ― despite ongoing worldwide economic difficulties.

“In order to counter this new type of threats, you certainly need smaller and lighter, high-maneuverable vehicles. And as an example, KIG has worked on developing Al-Maha and Al-Washaq as a solution to customers that require smaller vehicles to maneuver in narrow neighborhoods and streets,” he added.

Both Al-Maha and Al-Washq were developed after KIG received feedback from its local and international customers, according to Al Salman, who noted that the Al-Jawad vehicle is sometimes considered too large to effectively counter the “new type of threats.”

“The two vehicles are able to carry eight personnel in total (six plus two) in comparison with Al-Jawad, which can carry a total of 10 personnel. But what’s common is the high level of protection,” he said.

A fourth-generation vehicle, the Al-Jawad serves as an internal security vehicle and provides a high level of protection standards at the CEN B6 level of protection. It follows the success of its three previous generations.

On display for the first time during SOFIX was KIG’s new Al-Mared eight-wheel drive armored vehicle and its Al-Faris six-wheel drive armored vehicle. Both come with the Stanag L3 level of protection, upgradable to Stanag L4.

For its part, Oshkosh Defense showcased its Special Purpose All-Terrain Vehicle technology demonstrator at the show, after having it tested in an unnamed Middle Eastern country in 2014.

The S-ATV is lightweight and agile, and is advertised as being able to meet a range of mission requirements for armed forces in the U.S. and the Middle East, among other areas around the globe.

“There’s always a trade-off in weight classes, and as you get lighter, you generally accept far less protection,” explained Mike Ivy, senior vice president of international programs and global product support at Oshkosh Defense.

“The vehicle that the customers want is driven by the operational environment at a given time. In some cases, they need more speed, greater range and less protection; and in other cases, they need greater protection, less speed and transportability,” he added. “We feel like we are uniquely positioned to offer vehicles across that spectrum of missions.”

For Anthony Winns, the head of Lockheed Martin’s Middle East and Africa regional business, pointed at cost and size as a main focus for customers.

“A lot of the focus is on cost and miniaturization. And when you’re able to reduce cost, that means you are able to buy more weapons,” he said. “The economies are dictating that you want to be able to spend your money more effectively, and governments want to do that. The lighter weapons ― the less costly and the more effective ones.”

The fight against terrorism has become more complicated in a data-rich and data-dependent, international stage. Terrorists have adeptly used avenues through social media to spread philosophy and recruit members while engaging in campaigns of misinformation to influence communities.

The United States and its allies admit they haven’t caught up to waging war against campaigns of misinformation fought through social media because of the difficulty involved in keeping track of the online activity.

At the Middle East Special Operations Commanders Conference, an Iraqi commander recounted the struggles of going up against the Islamic State group as the country fought to take back Mosul from the militant organization.

ISIS was effective at hiding among the population, essentially forcing families to give up their homes as safe havens and serve as human shields, making precision airstrike targeting difficult for coalition forces fighting the militants. Some ISIS members used children as shields when moving about the city and dressed as women to avoid detection.

Insight into the adversary

Even though terrorist organizations are skilled in campaigns of misinformation, Raytheon’s Multimedia Monitoring System, or M3S, is touted as one way to fight back.

The company showed off the distributed and scalable monitoring tool at SOFEX. The M3S provides analysis of foreign language broadcast media, websites and social media. It is essentially a set of very organized, intelligent eyes and ears.

It can take information flowing from Facebook, Twitter or other social media as well as what is broadcast on local TV news and translate a foreign language into English and pinpoint content of interest.

“Tools like this are invaluable to the special operations community, particularly when it comes to targeting adversaries, particularly in a terrorism kind of environment that you face in the world today,” said Tom Goodman, director of Raytheon’s international cyber business. “They hide among the population, they hide in plain sight. … And they co-opt and sometimes coerce the population into collaborating with them.”

Tools like the M3S “are invaluable to the targeteers, as they are looking to get precision strikes in. No one wants to see collateral damage,” he said.

“So tools like this and being able to see what may look like a signature on a building from the air, if you can marry it up with contextual analysis from managing and monitoring what is going on in the broadcast media and other types of intelligence sources, that gives you a clearly better refinement of your targeting capabilities and not only minimizes that damage,” Goodman added. “It also ensures that you send a message clearly to the adversary that it doesn’t matter where you go, doesn’t matter what you do; we will find you, we will hunt you down and take care of you.”

The system can bring context and clarity to the plethora of information flowing through. “There is a lot of information that can be understood as it links to not only the context of the messaging that comes across media outlets but also who’s listening, what are the trends,” he said, “the following of what is being tweeted, retweeted, things like that.”

The system allows analysts to be able to monitor terrorist propaganda and the communities being targeted, as well as provide insight into an organization’s behaviors and what it might be planning.

This capability is particularly important as ISIS moves through North Africa, Southeast Asia and Afghanistan following its defeat in Iraq.

The M3S “is very good at separating the bad messaging from the good messaging, and it gives you the ability to be able to say, ‘No, here’s the reality, here’s what actually happened,’ and you can get ahead of that messaging that much faster, and so that is very critical,” Goodman said.

While the M3S is not a new system, it continues to improve alongside advancements in artificial intelligence, which continues to refine its ability to translate a variety of languages.

“There is a tremendous amount of intelligence that is built into this platform,” he said. “Not only is it looking for the keywords and able to do the translation not only in Arabic, for example, but the various dialects in Arabic and understanding the context, understanding the inflections and variation of words. It looks at how messages are being conveyed, the construct of certain words within a sentence and sentences leading up to it that gives you some insight into the intent of what is said.”

The system is also able to translate languages from Southeast Asia, Europe, South America and Africa, even breaking it down to tribal dialects.

Patterns of life

Massing the multitude of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data from airborne sensors continues to be a challenge, particularly in saving that data for the long term in a digestible manner.

General Atomics — best known for being the manufacturer of the famed Predator, Reaper and Gray Eagle unmanned aircraft systems — created a product now used by customers in the United States called the System for Tactical, Archival, Retrieval, and Exploitation, or STARE.

It’s software that runs on a computer with very large storage drives, which customers use to store ISR data, archiving it in ways that make it easy to later retrieve and exploit.

“It’s not just for General Atomics data. It doesn’t matter if it’s a King Air or a FLIR camera,” Jim Thomson, company regional vice president of international strategic development in the Middle East, North Africa and the Americas, told Defense News at SOFEX. “As long as it’s a common format … it can all be stored in the STARE server.”

The system enables the customer to put all of its data into one storage device and call up information. For example, a user can pull up imagery of a certain area over the past six months to see if there are any changes, or the user can look for “patterns of life,” Thomson explained.

The company has conducted demonstrations in the Middle East, including for Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Egypt, Thomson said.

“It’s a capability that our competitors don’t have,” he said. “You buy a system from a competitor, that video comes down off an airplane, and what do you do with it? Maybe you look at it that day. A week from now, do you still have access to that data? Probably not.”

The ability to examine patterns of life in a place like Mosul as the coalition forces worked to drive out ISIS was crucial to keeping collateral damage to a minimum and to hone in on appropriate strikes.

“It’s about really understanding who the enemy is and it’s not about taking out one bad guy ― you want to know where he is going, who his leader is and who his leader’s leader is.”

AMMAN, Jordan — U.S. drone sales could heat up in the Middle East as the Trump Administration moves to relax unmanned aircraft export policies abroad for non-NATO countries.

And while Jordan prominently displayed one of its Chinese drones that looks eerily similar to a Reaper unmanned aircraft system right next to its new colossal Russian-made Mi-26 Halo cargo helicopter at the Special Operations Exposition here, General Atomics came to the expo with a message to Middle Eastern countries that its unmanned aircraft systems are best suited to accomplish mission sets important in regional operations.

Because it’s been essentially impossible to buy larger drones with laser-designator technology by foreign countries in the Gulf region, area countries have turned to Chinese and Russian technology. Chinese drones are dominant in the Middle East because they are less expensive and there are no buying restrictions.

General Atomics has been able to sell its MQ-1 Predator UAS to NATO countries like the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Italy, but has only sold an exportable version of Predator approved for the Middle East and North Africa to the United Arab Emirates so far, Jim Thomson, company regional vice president of international strategic development in the Middle East, North Africa and the Americas, told Defense News at SOFEX this week.

[For full SOFEX coverage, visit Defense News here]

The company had to design an exportable version in order to sell it in the region due to previous Foreign Military Sales (FMS) restrictions on drones under the Obama Administration.

But with the new policies emerging under President Trump, General Atomics has been advising potential customers around the world, including the Middle East, to go ahead and start asking the U.S. government to buy drones they’ve been eyeing, Thomson said.

The U.S. government will still handle each potential drone sale on a case-by-case basis as it does all FMS, but now there’s a much higher chance of an approval, Thomson said.

Another aspect of the policy opens up the opportunity for companies to sell systems via direct commercial sale, where a company and another country can directly negotiate a deal, eliminating the longer process of using the U.S. government as a middle man.

The policy still has to flesh out, and there’s a 60-day period for industry to provide feedback on the draft, but Thomson believes the crux of the policy will remain and there’s no harm in starting the request process while the policy fleshes out, he advised.

But now that it may be easier for U.S. companies to sell drones globally, industry has to make a case to countries with Chinese and Russian systems that the capability U.S. companies bring to the table is a better deal.

[The ISIS tactics that have left Iraqi special forces weakened]

For General Atomics, the cherry on top for Middle East customers is the ability for the company’s UAS to team with manned aircraft and the fact it offers an end-to-end solution from the aircraft, to the ground control, to software and even a system that helps with data dissemination, Thomson said.

General Atomics pioneered manned-unmanned teaming with the U.S. Army early on, pairing its Gray Eagle UAS with AH-64 Apache attack helicopters to fill a gap in armed reconnaissance capability left open when the service retired its OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopters.

The systems are designed to pass imagery into the cockpit and give the pilot the ability to control the UAS’ payload. The pilot could also be capable of controlling the entire UAS, but operationally the service hasn’t been big on the idea.

General Atomics has approval to provide MUM-T capability to Gulf countries through FMS, Thomson said.

And Middle East countries want the capability.

“That is a benefit we have over the others like the Chinese or foreign suppliers because the waveforms have to be compatible, you have to have the right waveform for them to receive and transmit and those are U.S. waveforms,” Thomson said.

Additionally, the capability allows helicopters going out to the forward edge of the battles space without satellite connection to stay connected to home base through, for example, a satellite data link-connected Predator that can relay voice communications back to base, according to Thomson.

Predator also has a loiter capability of 35 hours, Thomson said, while helicopters can stay aloft in a mission for roughly four and a half hours.

This means the capability would be especially useful for maritime patrol missions in the Gulf region.

General Atomics has received quite a few requests from Middle Eastern countries expressing interest in the MQ-9B Guardian, which is a maritime patrol UAS that has a maritime radar in the belly of the aircraft, Thomson said.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Morocco all have maritime missions where it would be ideal to replace an expensive manned aircraft with an unmanned system, particularly because the job can be tedious and long to run patrols.

“I think that will be the first domino to fall will be a maritime Predator for one of these countries,” Thomson said, “and then from there we will see.”

Thomson believes the trend is usually for countries that operate drones through their air forces to pick U.S. Air Force drones so there will be a continued market for Predators and Reapers.

But he said Middle Eastern countries that came to the Army Aviation Association of America conference in Nashville, Tennessee, last month, are watching what the U.S. Army is doing with MUM-T and Gray Eagle and “they are seeing the benefits of manned-unmanned teaming that the U.S. Army has pretty much developed,” Thomson said, adding he has not seen other countries with such an ability.

Saudi Arabia, for instance, might be a better candidate for Gray Eagle, because it has the Royal Land Forces. “I could see them being a Gray Eagle customer,” Thomson said.

The Missile Moyenne Portee fifth-generation land combat missile system “is totally new,” Francis Bordachar, a military adviser for MBDA and a former French Army colonel, told Defense News in an interview at the Special Operations Exposition this week.

“There is no equivalent,” Bordachar said, although he noted there are several companies that claim similar capabilities.

The new system was prominently displayed at the company’s booth on the expo floor and is meant to replace the MILAN anti-tank guided missile and the Lockheed Martin and Raytheon-made Javelin system.

The system is made 100 percent in France and was fielded to the French Army in October 2017. It is expected to deploy to a few undisclosed locations, but will also be sent to troops operating in Libya and Mali this summer, Bordachar said.

But the Middle East has already begun to take notice of the brand-new system.

Bordachar said MBDA has already minted a deal with one country in the region and is expected to get under contract with a second by the end of the year.

He added there are other countries in the Gulf region that have expressed interest and that the company was paid a visit at SOFEX by Bahrain special forces, who were interested in learning more about the system.

MBDA’s new system includes a newly designed anti-tank guided missile, a disposable launch tube and a firing stand.

The firing stand is equipped with advanced technology like a passive dual-band seeker that includes a TV/cooled infrared sensor with three different magnification levels for NATO-standard threat detection and identification standards, Bordachar explained.

The system also has a GPS, a digital magnetic compass and a laser rangefinder.

The missile is a multipurpose tandem warhead capable of defeating a tank — such as the Russian T-90 — and can also be used as a bunker buster, Bordachar said.

The warhead is designed to pierce through a tank or concrete walls and then detonate once inside, spraying 1,500 tungsten “splinters,” he explained, adding that they are effective out to 15 meters. Beyond that, the tungsten fragmentation would not be damaging.

The missile has a range of 4 kilometers based on the French requirement, Bordachar said. But in a test over the weekend, the missile was apparently able to hit targets at 5 kilometers, and right in the center of targets at the 4-kilometer range.

The missile in the tube weighs 15 kilograms, and the interactive firing stand weighs 11 kilograms.

The system has two firing modes for the gunner: a lock-on-before launch and a lock-on-after-launch mode for beyond line-of-sight targets.

The Missile Moyenne Portee is also effective in all weather environments, Bordachar added.

The system’s controls are designed to look and feel like video game controllers, which makes it easy for young soldiers who have grown up playing video games to learn how to use the system and employ it effectively in combat, he said.

Additionally, the weapon system comes with a training simulator, a potentially appealing feature for young gamers, making it intuitive and easy to learn the system quickly.

The Fletcher laser-guided rocket launcher system could be spotted on top of an Oshkosh Special Purpose All-Terrain Vehicle, or S-ATV, at the expo with a BAE Systems-manufactured Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, or APKWS, positioned in the launcher.

St. Louis, Missouri-based Arnold Defense came up with the concept along with a team consisting of Norwegian company Nammo, BAE Systems and General Dynamics. While BAE provides the rocket and guidance package, Nammo manufactures the warhead and General Dynamics provides the rocket motor. A number of different laser designators, such as those of Leonardo or Rockwell Collins, can be integrated into the system.

Arnold Defense has been providing air-based rocket launchers since 1961 and has produced roughly 1.2 million over that time. Until recently, the company was the only game in town since the 1980s that made 2.75-inch rocket launchers, Jim Hager, the company’s CEO, told Defense News at the show.

Hager and his company have seen utility for its rocket launchers on both ground and sea-based equipment, but “nobody really listened until APKWS became a viable product,” Hager said.

Instead of spraying the enemy with dumb rockets in area-suppression missions, the APKWS provides pinpoint accuracy and, when paired with an Arnold launcher, flexibility, according to Hager.

A European special forces outfit was the first to understand the value of such a system, he said. The company, along with its partners, have spent a year working closely with the outfit to create the concept that has culminated in the creation of Fletcher, he added.

A special forces unit told Arnold Defense about a situation where it was pinned down by enemy fire from a mountain and only had a 60mm mortar system on hand. The unit couldn’t get enough elevation to destroy the target so it could move on, and the team was pinned down until darkness when its members were able to exfiltrate under cover.

With the Fletcher launcher, the degree of elevation is much higher, which gives it utility in an urban environment, too, Hager said, allowing it to point at tall buildings from close in, for instance.

Before APKWS, operators of rocket launchers were restricted to avoid collateral damage, “but now we have pinpoint accuracy, now we have a max effective range of about 8 kilometers,” Hager said, adding Nammo is working on a modified rocket motor that will extend to 12-15 kilometers.

But Arnold Defense sees applications across the entire spectrum, according to Hager.

“Infantry units can have self-contained artillery, if you will, but the ones that need it the most are special operations guys that are out there on their own and may be operating where they don’t have air cover or artillery support,” Hager said.

While Hager anticipates the first customer to be a European special operations force and expects to be under contract and shipping the product before the end of the year, he said there is interest in the U.S. Army both among the regular and special operations forces.

In the Middle East, “virtually every country has expressed an interest,” Hager said.

“It’s important because it’s a capability they’ve never had before, and while everybody seems to be focused on the special ops community, I personally believe the biggest opportunity for this product is base defense. They are going to put this at the front gate of every [forward-operating base] in the world and have a serious deterrent to the ubiquitous Toyota pickup truck coming racing in with explosives,” he added.

To design and develop a launcher for a ground vehicle platform, the company changed the form factor from what is typically a seven- or 19-tube launcher to a four-tube configuration. And the firm made it longer to fit the APKWS rockets. The tube walls are thicker, and the design can withstand the heavy rattling and bumping a combat vehicle will experience on off-road terrain.

The company will be test-firing the system at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, from a containerized weapon system next week, Hager said. It will be the first “semipublic” firing of the system, with members of the special operations community there as well as a variety of other interested parties.

The company is also planning to showcase the Fletcher launcher on an even smaller vehicle than the Oshkosh S-ATV ― the Polaris Dagor ― at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference later this month in Tampa, Florida, to showcase the flexibility of the launcher.

Polaris brought Dagor to SOFEX for the first time, although it has made many appearances at other shows worldwide.