Soldiers aren't yet fans of the new Land Warrior gear that Raytheon has been developing for 15 years.
There's a half-billion dollars invested in the gear hanging off the heads, chests and backs of the soldiers of Alpha company. Digital maps displayed on helmet-mounted eyepieces show the position of all the men in the unit as they surround a block of concrete buildings and launch their attacks. Instead of relying on the hand signals and shouted orders that most infantrymen use, Alpha company communicates via advanced, encrypted radio transmissions with a range of up to a kilometer. It's more information than any soldiers have ever had about their comrades and their surroundings.But as Alpha kicks in doors, rounds up terror suspects and peals off automatic fire in deafening six-shot bursts, not one of the soldiers bothers to check his radio or look into the eyepiece to find his buddies on the electronic maps. "It's just a bunch of stuff we don't use, taking the place of useful stuff like guns," says Sgt. James Young, who leads a team of four M-240 machine-gunners perched on a balcony during this training exercise at Fort Lewis, Wash. "It makes you a slower, heavier target." ...
The hope is that Land Warrior will perform so well under fire that the Army's chiefs will have no choice but to keep funding the system. "It's kind of a Hail Mary pass," one Pentagon insider tells me. Give guys like Gelineau and Starks a few months with Land Warrior, the thinking goes, and they'll grow to love it, saving the 15-year effort.
So far, no dice. "Oh yeah, I can't wait!" an Alpha company soldier writes sarcastically in an e-mail months after I visit Fort Lewis and just before he's due for deployment to Iraq. "We still aren't fans."
That attitude could change — quickly — with a single good combat experience.
The older soldiers won't like it, but the younger ones and the future soldiers who are spending their teenage nights playing Halo will love this sort of system. Land Warrior may be too heavy, too cumbersome, and too buggy at the moment, but either it or some future replacement will fill the niche and connect our soldiers each individually to the net. It's inevitable, and I'm glad we're working on it now.
(HT: Nick.)
Maybe they should first try this stuff out in the U.S. with task force teams such as SWAT or ATF, or even with border security.
I'm skeptical. The more complicated they make the system, the more ways there are for it to break.
BB: But the technology will improve. People used to make a living as television repairmen!
Yes, the technology will improve, but that will probably make it simpler. Personal weapons always need to be simple, because they're used in moments of overwhelming stress, when the soldier's awareness and ability to think are severely restricted. The soldier must be able to use the weapon when he's physically exhausted, when he has been wounded, or when he has just watched his friends die.
I'm no expert on guns, but I understand that handguns and rifles haven't gotten any more complicated over the past few centuries. Instead,they've become simpler, freeing the user to concentrate entirely on determining his target and aiming. Our soldiers don't carry around horns of black powder because modern bullets have the gunpowder built in. Rifling was a huge advance in gun technology, but it requires no extra attention from the user. Reloading mechanisms have advanced tremendously, all for the purpose of relieving the user from doing extra work so that he can concentrate on the shooting. Laser sights are easier to use than iron or telescopic sights.
I don't dispute the general point that some type of computer hardware will end up on the modern soldier. But it won't be useful as long as it's distracting the soldier from his most vital tasks: selecting his target and aiming his weapon. Soldiers in combat need the full use of their vision and most of their hearing.
I'm not sure what senses that leaves for the soldiers to receive information. But sticking a little video monitor over one of their eyes is definitely not the answer.
Maybe if that little monitor in front of their eye was clear, so they could see through it, but it had colored dots projected on the monitor to show friendly or enemy positions.
The problem is more with divided attention than literally blocking vision. It's like driving while talking on the phone: It doesn't make much difference whether you have a normal cell phone or a hands-free. When you divide your attention between driving and talking, your driving suffers.
BB: Based on my understanding of Land Warrior and blue force tracker, these technologies are primarily used before and after firefights, not during. They're used to help friendlies coordinate their movements, stay out of each others ways, and communicate together. Once a soldier is in a firefight, I expect he'll be paying more attention to his target than to his computer. But remember, winning a battle is more about being in the right place at the right time than about marksmanship.