TechTV August 21, 2002
Land Warrior sends consumer electronics into battle.
By Brandon M. Mercer
Laser sights. Thermal-imaging cameras. Daytime live video targeting capable of sending digital still photos over a wireless network. And that's just the gun. Tonight's "Tech Live" introduces you to the Land Warrior, the Army's next-generation soldier, due on battlefields by fiscal 2004.
The Land Warrior system includes a gun, an eyepiece, imaging devices, a tablet PC, GPS, and a communications system. The gun lets soldiers point it around corners or raise it out of a foxhole without ever sticking their head into danger. A small, flip-down eyepiece on the helmet, similar to those commercially available from Xybernaut, displays a feed from the gun's sighting camera or from the thermal-imaging camera.
The laser-sighting is not red like in movies. Instead, it's an invisible ray of energy that can be seen only through special optics. It's also a range finder. By using it, soldiers can mark a target and send those coordinates through a wireless local area network (LAN) and up the chain of command, if necessary.
Keeping soldiers on their toes
This is all part of a more important system that gives soldiers what the military calls "situational awareness."
"It's a fancy term. It means knowing where the hell you are," said Hugh Duffy, formerly of Pacific Consultants, a Silicon Valley think tank that's designing much of the system.
The military is already using the most powerful technology ever built for mobile command and control centers. Vehicles such as the new Stryker can display all the sophisticated intelligence that the command centers have. The problem has been getting that information to the individual soldier.
"Someone described battle as mass confusion," Duffy said. "Soldiers often don't know where they are. They're surrounded by gunfire and smoke. Everyone's running around like headless chickens."
The Land Warrior's eyepiece gives the soldier a virtual computer monitor that shows his location and, through GPS, the location of all his team, plus live video from unmanned aerial vehicles and any tactical data from intelligence agencies.
Soldiers can even use tablet PCs to send text messages.
"That's really what Land Warrior was all about," Duffy said. "To give [a soldier] the proper tools that a modern businessman has to communicate with his fellow soldiers."
But the system was almost cancelled when it was first proposed.
"In the first round the government hired a defense contractor to build the system in a conventional way. It was a disaster," Duffy said.
The Pentagon nearly cancelled the program, but an Army representative suggested the task be turned over to computer experts.
Not reinventing the wheel
"It's consumer technology trickling into the military systems," Duffy said. "It's the reverse of the way it was 10 years ago. That's the modern way to get things done."
The Land Warrior system is powered by ruggedized off-the-shelf technologies including a Pentium processor and Windows operating system.
"One of the advantages of using commercial technology is there is a lot of familiarity with that technology with our staff," explained John Murray, a vice president at Pacific Consultants. "And it's easier to recruit people with experience with commercial technology."
Duffy says the decision was easy. "Even if you spend the whole defense budget, you couldn't design a chip better than an Intel chip. You couldn't write a program better than Microsoft's Windows. You couldn't design a router better than a Cisco router. You have to use that stuff if you want to be at the cutting edge," he said.
In addition to using off-the-shelf technologies, the Land Warrior system is designed to be modular. Using flex circuitry, parts can be swapped, switched, and updated.
Customizing
John Pike from GlobalSecurity.org says not every soldier will get the Land Warrior system. The military is ordering only about 34,000 sets. Instead, parts of it will be given to different people in the patrol. Maybe one soldier will have the high tech gun. Another can have access to the router and the flip-down eyepiece.
Even when someone's wearing the entire pack, however, the weight isn't that much more than what's already being carried into battle.
The system could also have nonmilitary applications.
"If a soldier can communicate in the heat of battle, wouldn't it be nice if a fireman can communicate with his fellow firemen amid the dense smog and fire in a building?" Duffy said. "Here's another example of confusion that can be easily defeated with technology."
New features are still being added to the Land Warrior system, and although there are skeptics, it's safe to say that the Land Warrior system will greatly influence how ground warfare is waged in the future.
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