Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 1 Categories of terrain suitability for landing of helicopters
Membership value
Terrain category
Original colour coding
0.0-0.2
Not suitable
Red
0.2-0.4
Very limiting
Orange
0.4-0.6
Limiting
Yellow
0.6-0.8
Acceptable
Light green
0.8-1.0
Suitable
Dark green
HLS. Needless to say, the ultimate decision whether and where to land or not will
always rest with a helicopter commander.
Analysis of Cross Country Movement
The main goal of the Cross Country Movement (CCM) is to evaluate the impact of
geographic conditions on movement of vehicles in terrain (Rybansky
2009
;
Rybansky and Vala
2010
). CCM of a vehicle usually depends on numerous
geographical, meteorological, technical and personnel factors. There is a great
difficulty to identify all such factors and to calculate their impact on a vehicle
route and speed across real terrain, due to the complicated expressions of the
mathematical and physical relationship between vehicle speed and real environ-
mental factors (Rybansky and Vala
2009
). Each of these factors acts on vehicle
deceleration individually or collectively with other factors. To resolve these prob-
lems it is possible to consider the two following conditions:
Vehicle route deceleration, which is based on terrain surface configuration
(slope), surface roughness, surface materials (soils), vegetation roughness, etc.
Vehicle route extension that is based on terrain obstacles (mountains, lakes,
rivers, settlements, forests, etc.).
The methodology for determining the optimal (least-cost) route of a vehicle
depends on individual geographical factors. Each of these factors contributes to the
deceleration of vehicle speed relative to the maximum speed that a vehicle can be
driven on the road. The resulting speed of a vehicle on terrain can be determined by
individual decelerating (cost) factors, as part of the particular set of the above
mentioned geographical features.
Four types of possible ways can be determined as a result of CCM analyses that
can be the base for a commander
s optimal decision making:
'
The shortest path
The fastest path
The cheapest path
The safest path
Warfare recognises three basic degrees of CCM:
