CBRN Situational Awareness and Guidance for Military Armoured Vehicles

Overall CBRN defense in military armoured vehicles, aims to minimize losses, protect forces and retain effective and fast operation, the means being 1) avoidance of contamination, 2) protection and 3) decontamination to restore the functionality. Protection of against weapons of mass destruction like weaponized CBRN agents in military armoured vehicles is formed by in-built reduction of the impact by several layers of armour, and by dedicated detection & protection systems. The type and the scales of CBRN protection and monitoring solutions implemented, and situational awareness looked for, is dependent on role and operational context of these vehicles.

Armoured personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, main battle tanks, heavy armoured combat vehicles and light multirole vehicles have essential needs for timely early-warning and data and knowledge for smart and effective use of protective measures. They benefit from early-warning CBRN detectors that discover the emergence, presence, or absence of the respective threat agents in the operating environment. In these vehicles, CBRN sensor systems can be considered as elements for creating situational awareness for informed decision making and effective & smart triggering of the use of protective systems, like CBRN filtration.

On the other hand, armoured CBRN reconnaissance vehicles with their full CBRN capabilities, produce, mark and forward more comprehensive situational awareness and guidance in their missions.  In the holistic approach, military armoured vehicles can be perceived as members of a larger network – with each vehicle unit having impact on the overall perception of the CBRN scheme, achieved through the collection of data by individuals, sensor systems and intelligence. The fusion of all these sources of information leads eventually to the ability to understand implications, characters, and nature of CBRN threats, and their impacts on the operational environments, missions and forces. In the middle of the rapidly evolving CBRN threat landscapes, the performance of military armoured vehicles is put to a real test:  in protection and avoidance of contamination by implementation of defensive measures, warning and reporting of CBRN incidents, locating, identifying, tracking and predicting CBRN threats and hazards, and limiting the exposure to CBRN hazards.