Next-Generation Display Upgrade for Patriot Weapon System

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The Patriot weapon system has been upgraded in a way that will improve operators’ situational awareness and allow them to focus on the battlespace. Raytheon has upgraded the screen display for the system operators, adding three-dimensional (3D) color visuals.

Patriot has continually embraced new technologies, and, with a few small exceptions, such as heaters and cooling fans, the bulk of the system has been modernized over the past 17 years, according to Raytheon website.

The current Patriot display provides data in black and white and 2D. Operators have to memorise where information is stored among 100 tabs and they must scroll through the tabs to find precisely what they are looking for.

The Warfighter Machine Interface (WMI) is the next generation display, as Bob Kelley, a senior manager at Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems, told janes.com.  With this new display, operators need only to manipulate the image on the screen to see that the pilot is flying below the safe passage corridor altitude.

“It takes me about 35 or 40 seconds to figure that out on the old display, but about a second on the new display,” said Kelley. “We worked with human systems engineering folks to make this as user friendly as possible.”

Raytheon has also improved how operators receive Patriot health and status information. Now a symbol, such as a flashing yellow light, appears on their main display, alerting them to an issue. Health and status data are displayed on a monitor above the battlespace display.