Firm demonstrates military vehicle
Looking like a golf cart on steroids, the new remote-controlled Gladiator military vehicle easily ran through and over a makeshift obstacle course comprised of railroad ties, concrete slabs and a pike of rock and dirt. It’s just the kind of thing that U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Johnstown) likes to test drive.
But this time, he deferred to Jack, his visiting teenage grandson.
BAE Systems in Uniontown on Thursday demonstrated the machine, a six-wheeled device that can literally turn on a dime and go in harm’s way without endangering U.S. military personnel, for Murtha and other officials. It is being developed for the U.S. Marine Corps and will be built at the BAE plant, formerly United Defense, in the Greater Uniontown Industrial Park on Route 119 north.
It means employment at the local facility should climb from the current 141 to nearly 200. BAE Systems’ Uniontown plant restores and rehabilitates military tanks, self-propelled howitzers and other vehicles. BAE in June bought United Defense, the facility’s founder and former owner.
The Gladiator is a joint project of Carnegie Mellon University and BAE Systems. The unit demonstrated is a prototype, Herb Muktarian, communications director for BAE’s ground systems business, said. It will take several years before it will be used in the field, he added.
According to official documents, the Gladiator tactical unmanned ground vehicle is a high-mobility, tele-operated platform designed to support dismounted infantry and combat engineers operating forward of their main force. It allows the user and the supported unit to operate while concealed from hostile action. It is powered by a hybrid gasoline-electric motor and can be used for reconnaissance or direct fire capabilities. Each unit will cost several hundred thousand dollars to build. Price will depend on what equipment it carries.
It weighs 2,730 pounds and can reach a top speed of about 16 miles per hour on roads and 7 miles per hour off road. It can cross trenches nearly 40 inches wide, creeks 29 inches deep and maneuver walls two feet or more high.
Marine Col. Terry Griffin, project manager of the Department of Defense Robotic Systems Joint Project office, explained the vehicle can be used in a variety of situations that otherwise could put military personnel in the enemy’s sights.
“What does the Gladiator do?’ Griffin rhetorically asked the crowd before it was demonstrated. He spelled out a scenario where he could have used three of them to prevent the Iraq Museum in Baghdad from being looted, first informing people in their native language that if they attempted to enter the building, they would be hurt. Next, Griffin said, “I could escalate to non-lethal means,’ meaning the Gladiator could be equipped with certain weaponry that would not kill the looters, “but make them wish they were dead.’ If that failed, the machine’s lethal weapons could be deployed.
“It’s all about the ability to remote combat tasks and save military lives,’ Griffin concluded.
“What we see here is the synergy when you have good organizations get together to make a product,’ Murtha said at the program held at the BAE plant.
“We have put a lot of money into robotics,’ Murtha said. He inferred that remote-controlled vehicles could have helped prevent the bombing earlier this week that killed 14 Marines near Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, along a major infiltration route for foreign fighters entering the country from Syria.
“Congress, 15 years ago, said let’s have more unmanned vehicles. We must be able to send vehicles like this (the Gladiator) out there,’ to deal with what he called the “terrible kind of fighting’ that is ongoing in Iraq.
BAE, Murtha said, “is the second largest defense contractor in the U.S. They have the experience at building military vehicles and CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) has the technology to create them.’
CMU, whose National Robotics Engineering Consortium (NREC) has been developing unmanned craft for the military, partnered with BAE on the project. The U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Program Office for Robotic Systems in February awarded CMU and BAE a $26.4 million contract to design, develop and produce tactical unmanned ground vehicles (TUGV) for the U.S. Marine Corps. In April, BAE won a $30.9 million Army contract to develop and integrate robotic technologies for armed vehicles
“This program is one of the most gratifying things I have ever been involved in,’ Murtha said.
He was instrumental in helping United Defense move into the former Fruehauf Manufacturing plant at the industrial park in 1993. Murtha was happy to test drive one of the first self-propelled howitzers refurbished at the local plant. He has also been known to steer or pilot other military vehicles in his service as ranking member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Murtha has been a congressman for 31 years and also served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam and retired as a reserve colonel.
He explained that funding for new military vehicles “just isn’t going to be there. So we need to rehabilitate the old equipment and add new technology to it.’ Equipment is at a premium, he said, explaining that one military unit headed for Iraq was at the lowest readiness status possible.
“What we are doing here is the backbone of the future,’ he said, adding his prediction that soldiers will be recalled from Iraq starting in January or February.
“When that war’s over, the money will really start to dry up,’ he added.
“The work you are doing is essential to the security of this country,’ Murtha told the BAE employees.
BAE Systems is an international company engaged in the development, delivery and support of advanced defense and aerospace systems in the air, on land, at sea and in space.
BAE Systems North America, which is headquartered in Rockville, Md., is one of America’s national security, aerospace and information systems companies. BAE Systems North America employs more than 30,000 people at sites across the United States and the United Kingdom and generates more than $5 billion in annual sales.