With a little more time and a little more technology, there’s a chance, maybe, that the tragic shoot-down of an American helicopter in Afghanistan could have been stopped; 38 lives might’ve been saved, if two existing Army systems had been packaged into one.

Military researchers are looking to combine an acoustic gunshot detector with a dazzling laser that will startle shooters who take aim at American helos.

The Pentagon has spent decades trying to protect its helicopters, of course. But the irony at the core of that effort is that smart weapons are often easier to stop than dumb ones. Fire the latest guided missile at a U.S. copter, and the aircraft has all kinds of ways of keeping the weapon away: flares, chaff, infrared-flashing decoys, even lasers that fool the missile’s guidance system. But shoot off an old-school rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) or an improvised rocket, and the helicopter is vulnerable. There’s no guidance system to fool.

“It’s an unguided weapon, so you counter that threat more through flight planning and technique: Don’t use the same route for ingress and egress, maintain speed (i.e. don’t be a hovering, static target), and maintain nap-of-the-earth flight to minimize exposure (and time for someone on the ground to acquire you as a target, aim, and engage),” e-mails one former Army helicopter pilot. “I was much more concerned about engagement by volleys of small arms and RPGs than SAMs [advanced Surface to Air Missiles].”

Particularly susceptible to those attacks is the twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook — the kind of copter shot down over the weekend in Afghanistan. At 98 feet long, it holds three times the number of troops as a Black Hawk helo. Which means the Chinook makes for a bigger target. During takeoff and landing, it’s even more rocket-prone. In December, 2003, a Chinook went down over Fallujah, Iraq, killing 15 troops. Afterwards, CH-47s pilots in Iraq were told to fly only at night.

But there’s the possibility on the horizon of a better defense.

Since the start of the Iraq war, the Army has been collaborating with Pentagon top research division Darpa to build gadgets that figure out where gunshots and RPGs are coming from. A bundle of microphones listens for a bullet or RPG. Each mic picks up the round at a slightly different time; those tiny differences allow the system to calculate where the shooter is.

Once the first shot is heard, the system spins the truck’s weapon around to the direction of the gunman, “facilitating shooter neutralization,” as manufacturer Mustang Technology Group puts it.

Helicopter pilots haven’t had that sort of system at their disposal — until now. Four prototype HALTT (“Helicopter Alert and Threat Termination“) sensors are now on board Black Hawk helicopters and deployed to Afghanistan, as Danger Room alum Nathan Hodge reports.

Back at home, Chinook helicopters  — like the kind that went down over Wardak province this weekend — are undergoing tests of the HALTT system. In one June 2010 trial (.pdf), HALTT detected 95 percent of the 2,400 shots fired at it (although it had troubles finding the direction of those shots when the helo was hovering).

Like the first truck-mounted systems, the HALTTs are designed only to find gunshots. The ground-based systems quickly evolved, and learned to pick up RPGs. Military researchers are hoping the airborne systems can make the same transition. And soon.

Not only would it help pilots to know that gunshots or RPGs were headed in their direction. But there’s some chance the shooters could be stopped fairly quickly. Just like on the ground, weapons can be quickly slewed for counterfire. It doesn’t even have to be another gun that shoots back.

ITT, for instance, is including a pair of lasers in its Infrared Countermeasures system. One will be an infrared zapper, designed to screw with the guidance systems of those advanced missiles. (See the infomercial-ish video above.) The other could be a very visible laser — designed to startle or “dazzle” the shooter, preventing him from taking a second shot.

“In essence, what you do there is make it impossible for a human to observe your aircraft and aim his weapon at your aircraft by creating a distracting light source,” ITT engineer John Janis told Defense Tech last month. “That has been done in the past and is a proven technology and one that we can do out of the same apertures and out of the same system that we can do out of our infrared heat seeking missile countermeasures.”

He’s right; it has been done in the past. The Army bought thousands of handheld laser dazzlers for infantrymen to use at checkpoints. They’re more easily noticed than a command shouted through a bullhorn. And although the dazzlers can be hazardous when misused, they’re not nearly as dangerous as a M-16.

ITT is one of four companies competing for the Army’s new helicopter protection contract. Winners could be announced as early as next month. The two companies will then have 21 months to produce competing prototypes. Army helicopters could be flying with the system as soon as 2017, under the current schedule.

But that timeline was drawn up before the tragic incident this weekend over Wardak. The military has a habit of speeding up technology projects after such catastrophes. Perhaps helicopter pilots could get their protection, while there’s still a war going on in Afghanistan.

Photo: U.S. Army