INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: FLIR Government Systems
SOTECH 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 8 (October)
William Sundermeier joined FLIR in 1994 as product marketing manager for thermography products and has held a variety of positions before being named president of Government Systems, the largest of FLIR’s three business units, in April 2006.
Q: What sensor capabilities and technologies are needed today by special operations forces?
A: SOF missions happen in extreme environments and at any time of the day. Because their missions are so important they need 24/7 capabilities operating in all weather conditions, especially at nighttime, so they demand the best covert night vision equipment. They need the ability to not let lack of ambient light or bad weather determine mission capability.
In addition, they want to conduct their missions during times that provide a significant operational advantage over their adversaries. They’ve been successful in doing that because of their superb training and leveraging the technologies that provide them this operational advantage at nighttime or during bad weather.
Q: Special operations forces are constantly on the move so they need flexible and multi-purpose tools that give them a broad spectrum of capabilities.
A: That’s correct. They want something that’s lightweight and multifunctional that isn’t just a point solution. They need to be very agile and don’t want to be encumbered with lots of equipment, which weighs them down and is cumbersome to operate.
Q: Does FLIR produce such integrated systems?
A: Yes, we have developed many such products designed specifically for special operations forces. For example, our Recon III handheld, thermal imager/target acquisition system includes an integrated digital compass, laser range finder, laser pointer, GPS and a visible-light camera. That one tool replaces 60 pounds of kits with an integrated system that weighs only 9 pounds. We also provide integrated systems under the Short Range-Ground Mobility Visual Augmentation System program. We take a Recon III and mount it on a vehicle with pan and tilt capability. It can be used as an observation platform for the vehicle, and the imaging device can also be unclipped from the vehicle mount and hand-carried directly into the field. It wasn’t that long ago that when a special forces operative on the ground or in the right seat of a MH-6 Little Bird helicopter would first have to identify something with his eyeballs or binoculars, then look down at the map to figure out where they were and where the target was. Now they’ve got those capabilities packaged together in a single small sensor suite.
Q: That’s an important point. Not only do they want visible and infrared capabilities, they want geo-location tools that enable them to know where they are—even in darkness.
A: And also in the daytime, when they’re going into a foreign environment, it’s nice to have a reference, other than just visual references, to know their exact grid coordinates. That capability is vitally important for special operations forces to accomplish the three F’s: find it, fix it and finish it. They have to find their target, fix it—know exactly where it is, and then finish it, depending on the mission.
It used to be that you needed three different pieces of gear to do each of those, maybe more. Now the imaging sensor, navigation solution and designator capabilities are integrated into a single, small package.
Q: Sounds like you understand the needs of special operations forces.
A: We try to communicate extremely well with our customers. We don’t guess, they tell us what tools and capabilities they need to complete their mission. The flexibility of our product lines is very appropriate for SOCOM because special ops, by definition, is adaptable. You just don’t have a tool that does one thing. They have to have the ability to be flexible, adaptable, do anything, go anywhere at any time and always be successful. So keeping that flexibility in our products and capabilities is how we try to align with what SOCOM needs.
It’s a great combination because you’ve got a flexible, adaptable customer looking for creative solutions. FLIR, as a company, is very agile and has lots of its own research and development dollars to spend so we don’t need a big contracting cycle to develop new products. We have technology that is highly evolved so it is lightweight, compact and consumes little power, and that plays together to solve the fundamental desire of special forces to do more with less.
That’s important, and we’ve developed our business model to be responsive and flexible so that when SOCOM or other special operators come to us and say, “I like that, but I’d also like these additional capabilities,” we’re agile enough to rapidly prototype new technologies, test and prove them without asking for an NRE contract vehicle, manufacture them in quantity, and then field them quickly to the forces that need them most. We’ve found that it’s the fastest way to saving lives and getting the mission accomplished. ♦