英国军方领导着全世界射击范围安全

Tens of millions of small-arms rounds, from pistols, rifles and automatic weapons, are fired on Britain’s military training ranges each year. Some of these rounds can travel for kilometres, even after ricocheting. A number of the ranges are small and confined, or have unusual topography. It’s essential, therefore, to protect service personnel and the nearby public from stray rounds and ricochets – but it’s a very complex task.

国防部在英国拥有240,000公顷的土地，包括16个主要和104个小型培训区，范围和营地。其中三分之二的人被称为国防训练庄园，仅用于为武装部队准备服务。每天约有9,000名三级服务人员（英国军队，皇家海军和皇家空军）通过庄园。

Safety on the ranges is co-ordinated by the tri-service Defence Ordnance Safety Group (DOSG), led by Major (Ret’d) Charles Ross, previously of the Royal Artillery. He relies on Leica Geosystems equipment, including a UAV (drone), a multi-station and a GNSS rover, to get the job done.

“我不能足够赞扬Leica Geosystems的一流支持。他们给了我们很多建议，并且很快就可以解决我们的问题。我们很幸运，他们对我们的工作如此感兴趣，而他们从不说“不”。
-查理·罗斯（Charlie Ross），国防军械安全集团

建模“概率解决方案”
For each range they’re called in to assess, Charlie Ross and his team need to determine the ‘weapon danger area’. First, they gather industry-standard 3D point-cloud data, using Leica equipment, to map the area. This creates a very precise and detailed 3D digital model of each range, including the relative height and extent of the range floor.

接下来，该团队将这些调查的DFX输出馈送到他们内部开发的世界领先的弹道建模软件中。这模拟了发射武器的效果，使用高度复杂的数学来模拟数十亿可能的轨迹。它标识了可能发生的ricochet，以及在哪个角度和距离处。这提供了统计概率，当与每个范围的地形合并时，确定了武器危险区域。

“No one else in the world does what we do.”
- 查理·罗斯（Charlie Ross），国防军械安全集团

DOSG的“概率”模型最初于1996年开发，不断增强以提供最大价值。这就是为什么其他北约联盟成员（包括美国）使用的模型背后的引擎。DOSG还与国际范围安全咨询小组合作提供全球咨询服务；例如，他们最近对新西兰进行了调查并建模了两个有问题的范围。

从人体主观性到非凡的准确性

According to Charlie: “Before we had the technology, a General would approve a range as ‘safe’ if it had been in use for 100 years and no one had ever been shot there! When it became clear that that was too subjective, smaller ranges and those with more complex topography were simply decommissioned. Then we moved into using an engineering contractor to do our surveys, but it wasn’t very satisfactory.”

Seven years ago, however, DSOG introduced equipment from Leica Geosystems and they haven’t looked back since. Their equipment currently includes:

• 这Aibot X6intelligent aerial surveying UAV (drone)
• 这Nova MS60multi-station – the world’s first self-learning multi-station
• 这GS18T- 世界上最快的GNSS RTK ROVER。

查理说，Leica Geosystems套件使团队能够以极高的信心来计算风险。这意味着他们甚至可以保持最小，最复杂的范围，并且仍然可以确保所有人的安全。

“The UAV delivers precision data very quickly. Where once it would have taken several days to photograph and gather point-cloud data for, say, six to eight hectares, we can now do it ourselves in around six hours, from launch to finished product. We know that our results are 99.99% accurate and crucially, we now gather and store all of our data ourselves. With all of the Leica geospatial survey equipment working together, we’ve dramatically improved accuracy - certainty from within five metres to just 10 millimetres today.”

这也许就是为什么该模型从未在计算中失败的原因；失败意味着服务人员，观察员或公众成员的死亡或伤害。查理·罗斯（Charlie Ross）说：“我们的3D表示是代表我们的射击范围的基础，在代表我们的基础上是一个重大的步骤变化，他们从未使我们失败。”