Strategic Operations Expansion and New Products

Posted on Monday 28th February 2011 | Defence

Strategic Operations Expansion and New Products

Strategic Operations (STOPS) recently opened two new offices. At the same time the San Diego-based company continues to upgrade and expand its training support products and services offerings. Group Editor Marty Kauchak reports on developments at STOPS. 

To support STOPS’ continued, steady growth since its 2002 founding, the company, in December 2010, established two North American offices. 

In one case, STOPS opened a home office in Coronation, Alberta to support the newly established STOPS Tactical Training Canada entity. The subsidiary is offering its unique brand of training support products and services to the Canadian military market. Paul Flavell, the company’s new International Projects Director, told MS&T, “We’ve started doing some work with the Canadian forces already. We have some jobs with them – and obviously we’re looking to expand our market.”  The office will also support current and emerging business opportunities elsewhere around the world. 

About the same time, STOPS’ new office in Herndon, Va. opened to provide direct support to all STOPS Hyper-Realistic training and programs on behalf of the U.S. DoD, inside and beyond the Washington, D.C. Beltway. Curtis Watts, Vice President of Special Programs, manages the office. “We’re doing some work with the special operations community and it helps to have a presence not only in D.C., but Curtis gets to Florida quite a bit, too,” Kit Lavell, Executive Vice President, pointed out. 

Product Developments

The company’s Cut Suit, a human-worn, partial task simulator, continues to receive interest from the community following its most recent display at the 2010 I/ITSEC. STOPS is scheduled to demonstrate the Cut Suit to the Royal College of Surgeon’s in London late March. Cut Suit has been demonstrated for MS&T at earlier S&T community conferences. 

STOPS is also enhancing its Re-locatable Habitat Unit (RHU) product line. The RHU was designed to be a scalable, mobile MOUT system, tailorable to different areas of operations. “We’ve come up with an East Africa RHU and we have other RHUs that are scalable, portable and easily moved around,” Lavell said. 

When asked about the RHU system’s unique attributes, Lavell responded, “The RHUs are palletized on a 4 ft. x 8 ft. pallet system. They can be stacked and shipped on a pallet on train, planes, truck or ship and moved around. The basic 8 ft. x 12 ft. RHU can be on that pallet and be taken off that pallet and totally assembled, including all of the set decorations inside, in about 15 minutes – it’s very rapidly assembled. We now want to demonstrate assembling a small village including all of camera systems and other after action review infrastructure.”                

STOPS is fielding RHUs to the U.S. Army at Fort Bliss to integrate into the facility’s MOUT infrastructure. 

The company has teamed with other strategic partners, including SAIC, to further develop and field RHUs. 

STOPS is also adding fidelity to live training for anti-terrorism and security forces. 

The new Ballistic Unmanned Ground Vehicle permits live firing at a vehicle-like target during vehicle checkpoint and entry control point training. Lavell pointed out the BUG-V is Wi-Fi operated and can maneuver on- and off road. He added, “It’s covered with an AR500 ballistic steel body to withstand hits of up to .50 cal. ammunition. Over the top of that is a very light weight, foam body that can be shaped as a taxi, sedan, Bongo truck or other vehicle. It is easily repairable and almost self-sealing when you fire live ammunition at it. It’s fairly inexpensive.”

The AR500 steel protects the chassis, diesel engine and other components which add thermal signatures and other attributes to the live training experience. 

STOPS has demonstrated the BUG-V for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.                

 Authored by Lori Ponoroff 

Published in Halldale Media Group