Interview with Karen Wood, Program Manager, STO (10/09)

Johanna Jones: I'm Johanna Jones, DARPA's Public Affairs Officer and today we are speaking with Dr. Karen Wood, a Program Manager in DARPA's Strategic Technology Office. So, Karen, tell me a little bit about some of the challenges that DARPA is working on with urban operations.

Karen Wood: Well, the urban environment is a significant shift from, basically, the Cold War type of scenarios that we were facing years ago. We had very clearly defined enemies at that time. You knew who the good guys were. You knew who the bad guys were. It's not so obvious anymore, coupled that with your enemy now looks just like the civilian population, so it's going to take a lot more intelligence to know who's who. The battle space is very undefined. You can be fighting in the middle of the street. You can be fighting in someone's home. The urban operations shrink everything down from a big field to now city streets where there are children and civilian structures and family's homes. So, we have to think differently. We have to try to be as adaptive as the enemy. We've got the best technologies in the world, and yet we're struggling to keep up with the adaptive nature of the enemy.

One of DARPA's particular challenges is how do we address these issues quickly, adaptively and in a way that fits in the op-tempo for the military so that they don't have to slow down. We're putting a lot of stress on individual soldiers. How do we take some of that burden off of them? Sometimes technology is the answer. I work particularly in sensors and force protection types of technologies, and that's what our goals are. It's really to keep the soldiers safe so that they can move about.

Johanna: You're working on a program called Crosshairs. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Karen: Crosshairs is really a set of five capabilities. And it's modular, so every vehicle may not have the full set. Crosshairs capability includes being able to answer the question, 'What's coming in at me? What's the threat?' So, specifically, small arms fire, rocket propelled grenades or RPGs, anti tank guided missiles, ATGMs. So, that first capability is, 'What's coming in at me? Is it going to hit me? And where is the shooter?' So, there's a detection tracking and shooter localization capability.

The next capability is, 'How do I respond? Now, I know where the shooter is. I have an automatic slew to cue capability with a weapons system.'

The third capability is controls and display. 'Now I have a situational awareness piece that tells me where in the scene the shooter or shooters are. So, I can designate targets or improve my situational awareness.'

The fourth capability is networking. We use EPLRS compatible radios, which are military standard, to network to the vehicles around me so that now they know that there's a shooter over here shooting this particular threat - so that now we've improved their situational awareness.

The fifth capability is an active protection system. In this particular case, in the Crosshairs program we're actually using another DARPA technology called Iron Curtain. What that does is it actually defeats or duds an incoming RPG round, and we're looking at some of the more advanced rounds right now as well.

Johanna: What point are you in this program?

Karen: We're actually towards the end. In the last phase of the program in December of 2008, those first four capabilities that I described – detect, track, localize and identify – were all demonstrated. Our favorite solution was Iron Curtain because it gets the broadest set of threats. So, that was developed in parallel with the Crosshairs effort. So, now we're basically marrying the two technologies, and we'll be doing some operational testing and significant performance testing.

Johanna: One technology or program that I've heard quite a bit about is Boomerang, and I hear there's a tie between Crosshairs. Can you tell us a little bit about that program?

Karen: Crosshairs was actually the original set of capabilities that was sold as a program at DARPA several years ago. When the Iraqi War broke out, we were asked to look at our programs and if there was anything we could accelerate and get into the field to help with the fight. Well, DARPA in the 90s had developed a technology for using acoustic sensing to solve the true sniper problem – so, somebody shooting at you from kilometers away that you needed exquisite accuracy to localize where the shooter is because he's very far away. What they came up with was an array of sensors that basically had a 50 meter baseline. But, the good news is we learned a lot about acoustic sensing at that time.

Nothing really came of that. The program ended successfully. There were several performers, so what we did is we dusted that off. Ten years had passed, so processing had gotten a lot better. We were all a lot smarter, and said can we take what we learned in that program and apply it to this brand new problem. The initial deployment from concept on paper to 50 systems was 66 days. It was a very rapid program that gave the capability for shooter localization. It was fielded. Now, what we didn't do in 66 days was a lot of the illities testing that's necessary to do a proper fielding. What we really did is the next year - we took all of the subsystems and worked to improve them. Now they're fielded in Iraq and Afghanistan. We've had lots of emails giving us anecdotes of them truly saving soldiers' and marines' lives, so it was very rewarding. We got a lot of support, not only from DARPA but from the user community as well.

Johanna: That's fabulous. What about some of the challenges of getting something into the field so quickly? What was that like? That's very unlike any other DARPA program.

Karen: It is, and it has a unique set of challenges. We worked very closely with the Marine Corps initially. They were big advocates. They took the first 50 systems out into the field. The systems had issues with electromagnetic interference and other things that we simply didn't test before we sent them out. They didn't give up on the program. They gave us time to go back and fix some of these things.

The Marine Corps stuck with us. Word was getting out in the field, 'Hey! We've got these things that tell you where the shooter is. This is great! We know where they're shooting from.' So, the guys actually in the field not here in Washington were saying, 'Where are ours? We want some.'

We worked with the Rapid Equipping Force, and they really stood up and supported it. Fast forward a year or so, maybe 18 months, a picture of the Boomerang system is on Al Jazeera. They got some of the technical details wrong, but basically they said, 'If you see this thing on a vehicle, don't shoot. They know where you are.' But, there were a lot of challenges. If I hadn't had a lot of support from DARPA and the Marine Corps, it would have been impossible.

Johanna: You have a very interesting perspective because you've been out in the field a lot. How has that changed how you do work here at DARPA – and talking about transition a little bit – how do you get from an idea to out in the field?

Karen: I would say being out in the field actually enriches your experience and really helps you understand the impact that you could potentially have on individual soldiers. These are real people. These are guys and girls you know, and so you really want to do what's right by them.

You actually get a thank you every once in a while from the field, so that's really pretty cool.

Johanna: You've talked a little bit about Boomerang and Crosshairs, both great programs, really interesting, but what are your next challenges here? What other programs are you working on?

Karen: Well, one of the obvious extensions was taking some of the lessons learned in the Boomerang program and the need for a gunshot detection on light tactical vehicles, and trying to apply that to other platforms. Right now, we're looking at helicopters, and we've taken acoustic sensors and put them on helicopters.

In the fight in Afghanistan right now, 85 percent of engagements have a small arms fire component to them, so it would be nice to know where those shooters are, you'd think. We've actually got a program that's been ongoing for about 14 months and has had about seven weeks of flight testing where we're showing that we can actually localize the shooters on the ground who are firing up at helicopters. That has been very interesting.

As we shift from Iraq to Afghanistan, the terrain is so different – it really poses some new challenges that I think we are going to have to look at technologies to solve.

Johanna: So you have talked about your programs here, but what about you, how did you come to DARPA?

Karen: I actually came from NASA. When I came in 2002, I came in thinking I was going to be working on large space structures. And I did. That was my first DARPA program. I had a space manufacturing program that was great and I really enjoyed it. I was able to take that and apply it in a new way and use it for force protection.

I was able to look at problems maybe little bit differently than people who typically worked on sensors for tactical vehicles. I knew nothing about the Army I just said, 'I think the soldiers need this.'

Johanna: And what makes DARPA a unique place to work? What have you found that's kept you here, how long have you been here?

Karen: I have been here a long time, longer than is typical actually. I have been here seven and a half years. DARPA is unique because you can do what I just described. You can come in as a large space structures person and then end up doing something like the Boomerang system, really the sky is the limit here.

What DARPA does is it takes the resource excuse off the table and they will make sure that you have what you need. If you have a program or you have something that looks promising, you will have what you need to succeed. It is up to you and your contractors and your staff to make it happen, but the resource problem is not going to be your excuse. You really can work on multiple, very interesting problems in many different ways and you know that you always have the support that you need. And that's what I found to be true of DARPA.

Johanna: Karen, thank you so much for coming today. We really enjoyed speaking with you.

Karen: It was my pleasure.