EQUIPPING THE FUTURE WARRIOR
EQUIPPING THE FUTURE WARRIOR
PEO Soldier Outfits Warfighters with High Tech
Systems to Enhance Their Combat Effectiveness.
by Karen Thuermer, MIT Correspondent
THE SOLDIERS IN IRAQ WERE ORDERED TO TAKE DOWN AN UNFAMILIAR LOCATION AT NIGHT. BESIDES NOT KNOWING THE LAYOUT OF THE LAND, THEY WERE NOT CERTAIN WHERE THEIR BUDDIES WERE DURING THE MISSION OR WHICH SITES HAD AND HAD NOT BEEN CLEARED.
“Soldiers can spend a lot of time trying to explain where they are and where to bring in attack helicopters and added support,” said Lieutenant Colonel Brian Cummings, product manager for Ground Soldier with the Army Program Executive Office (PEO) Soldier. “There can be a lot of miscommunication. But thanks to systems developed for the Army and assessed under PEO Soldier, personnel in the field are now being outfitted with the latest emerging technologies that allow them to communicate their specific locations to their unit commanders and fellow soldiers and indicate which buildings have been cleared.
Through its work with primary contractor General Dynamics, PEO Soldier is able to ensure that the soldier and everything he or she wears or carries works together as an integrated system.
“Up until this point, we had good success in Iraq in determining where vehicles were, but not necessarily the exact location of the soldiers,” said Jeff Witherel, Ground Soldier operations chief. “The soldiers would go into buildings and leave their vehicles parked somewhere outside. The commander, who stays back watching the movement on his or her display screen, would only see the vehicle. He would not know where the soldiers are.”
By collaborating and partnering with industry, PEO Soldier is assessing the best and most mature of emerging technologies available to the soldier. In operation since 2002 and headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Va., PEO Soldier designs, develops, procures, fields and sustains virtually everything soldiers wear or carry. This includes man-portable laser/light technologies for pointing and illumination, range-finding and target designation; night vision capabilities; ballistic and fragmentation protection; technologically advanced tactical and environmental protective clothing; individual chemical protective gear; and personnel airdrop equipment.
Various PEO Soldier programs are behind these technological advancements. The Land Warrior (LW) program develops integrated protection and networking fighting systems for ground soldiers. Consequently, LW is resulting in a first-generation, integrated, modular fighting system that uses stateof- the-art computer, communications and geolocation technologies to link dismounted soldiers into the digital battlefield network. It combines computers, lasers, navigation modules, radios and other technologically advanced equipment to improve soldiers’ ability to communicate on the battlefield.
The program seeks to outfit soldiers with high tech uniforms that take advantage of the most technologically advanced equipment available to enhance their combat effectiveness, increase soldiers’ survivability, and improve their quality of life. Its mission is to develop the best equipment and field it as quickly as possible.
The Mounted Soldier System (MSS) develops the same type of systems for combat vehicle crew members and platform commanders by providing increased mission effectiveness on the network-centric battlefield in the areas of command and control, situational awareness, communications, force protection, survivability, mobility and sustainability. Anticipated primary requirements are a peripheral display device, encrypted cordless communications device and an individual communication headset device.
The Ground Soldier (GS) integrates numerous systems and components to maximize the best and most mature of emerging technologies. Ground Soldier and MSS leverage development and combat-zone successes of both the Land Warrior and Mounted Warrior systems as related to dismounted soldier situational awareness and battle command. Anticipated primary requirements are a ruggedized computer, navigation device, display device and an individual input control device.
FIELD TESTING
The technologies and advancements that are underway will outfit the soldier of tomorrow quite differently than the soldier of today. “We are undergoing a revolutionary step in the way warfare will be fought,” Cummings said. “There’s a past, current and future element to this.”
This has already been proven by the comprehensive assessment of the latest LW and MW systems conducted jointly by PEO Soldier and the Army Infantry Center at Fort Lewis, Wash., for two years. “The Army began operational assessment of the LW and MW systems in May 2006 with 400 soldiers of the 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiments, 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT), 2nd Infantry Division at Fort Lewis,” he explained.
At that time, 440 LW systems and 147 MW systems were used in the assessment. “We dropped an entire battalion of battle warrior and land warrior systems,” Cummings continued. “Basically, we started perpetuating and having battalions do their normal training drills using the digital system.”
During the testing, the battalion was instructed to conduct normal training drills using the first-generation, integrated, modular digital system to link dismounted soldiers into the digital battlefield network. As the soldiers found, the system made the soldiers capable of instant voice and data communications with other soldiers, command posts, and supporting vehicles and aircraft.
With their helmet-mounted display, the LW equipment soldiers were able to see their location, locations of other LW-equipped soldiers, known enemy positions and operational graphics on a large-scale map display and receive and communicate up-to-the-minute mission plans and orders.
The systems have been designed to be modular and tailored for the soldier’s task and mission. The unit commander decides the components of LW that will be deployed for a mission. The two main LW configurations are for the soldier and the squad leader. The soldier LW version includes a radio with short-range inter-squad voice and data communications. A squad leader’s LW system includes a multi-band inter- and intra-team SINCGARS-compatible radio, a keyboard and handheld flat panel display.
“They are able to see themselves, Stryker vehicles and their buddies on the map with operational graphics,” Cummings said.
“The Land Warrior system provides near real-time knowledge of where I am and where all my units are. That gives me a better ability to command and control the movement of the unit in the field, prevent fratricide, and determine what force I want to bring to bear on known or suspected enemy locations at a given time,” said Captain Patrick Roddy, commander of C Company, 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment at Fort Lewis.
The assessment concluded in September 2006 and was followed by a limited user test (LUT) of the LW package by the 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 4th SBCT, 2nd Infantry Division, which deployed to Iraq in May 2007. The LUT was held over a three-month period, which culminated in September and October 2006. During that test, the advanced equipment improved the soldier’s ability to communicate on the battlefield. The Army also learned that it would be helpful to lighten the weight of the LW system that combines computers, lasers, navigation modules, radios and other advanced equipment. Consequently, lighter weight equipment that encompasses the latest in state-of-the-art gear is one of the goals of PEO Soldier.
“Our experience in Fort Lewis and combat in Iraq has made it possible for us to do things that are unprecedented in changing warfare as we know it,” stated Cummings.
“The vertical integration between my Stryker platforms and my dismounted guys now is much better,” said Lieutenant Colonel Bill Prior, commander of the 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment at Fort Lewis. “It’s not just a radio or being able to see him—the Land Warrior can see the Strykers on the Land Warrior screen, and the Strykers can see all the Land Warriors through computer screens. So the situational awareness and the ability to pass orders, messages and that kind of thing will be a big benefit for us.”
SOLDIER FEEDBACK
General Dynamics has been the primary contractor on the Land Warrior systems since 2003. Its involvement has resulted in many improvements to systems introduced, according to company officials.
“We have had systems in theater for the past year,” said Mark Showah, director of the company’s Integrated Systems Group. “We have continually employed service engineers in theater with the system to give us feedback.”
Consequently, changes have been made to the systems to reduce the size, weight, power and cost of systems while improving some of the capabilities. For example, early systems introduced by General Dynamics at Fort Lewis weighed about 17 pounds. Now they weigh about 10 pounds.
“Feedback from soldiers indicated the systems needed to be lighter weight,” Showah said.
Another improvement regards the way in which soldiers communicate over their computers. “Some of the feedback we got back from soldiers was that during times when they do not have good voice communications, they continue to have contact via text messaging. They would do this by using a soft keyboard with a mouse moving around and tapping at virtual keys on a display.
But soldiers indicated they wanted something much quicker and more efficient. General Dynamics responded and reworked the keyboard and made it the size of a Blackberry so that they could text message more efficiently.
Soldiers also indicated that they would like a way to incorporate virtual chemical light markers, or “chemlights,” on their digital mapping system. These icons on the Land Warrior map are used to indicate which houses and buildings have been cleared. But the information could not be relayed to fellow soldiers and unit commanders in a way that would make it possible to see the entire picture of how soldiers were progressing in clearing a complete community.
“When soldiers got the Land Warrior system, they said they would like an easy way to drop these virtual markers on maps to indicate that a building has been cleared,” Showah commented. “We incorporated that capability.”
That capability makes it possible for soldiers to communicate with their commanders and let them and friendly forces know whether or not a building has been cleared. The system uses color coding that is transmitted to the unit commander and other soldiers in the friendly forces. A red dot indicates that a house is empty. A yellow dot means the soldiers have entered a house, and a green dot reveals that they have cleared the house.
“With such a system, the commander can now direct the soldiers and tell them where to go next,” Witherel said.
Consequently, with the Land Warrior system, a soldier can “drop a chemlight” on the map and a little light goes on that broadcasts the information to everyone. If there is a problem or an insurgent, everyone will know to move to that location.
“Once the technology was introduced into theater, the soldiers also a number of other uses for it that we never contemplated,” Showah added.
COST ISSUE
During the past year, soldiers with 4th Brigade, 9th Infantry Regiment have faced the challenges of asymmetric warfare head on with unprecedented situational awareness, thanks to LW, and the battalion’s success has prompted others to ask for the system.
“A platoon that has Land Warrior can cover a lot more ground a lot faster,” said Staff Sergeant James Young, a weapons squad leader with Alpha Company.
Command Sergeant Major Phil Pich, who recently returned from Iraq, concurred. “The system gives four distinct advantages that other soldiers do not have,” he said. “It gives you situational awareness, which allows you to see all blue forces that are in your area of operations. It gives you maps and imagery. It also allows the leaders to change graphics while on the move. And it gives us voice and text messaging capabilities.”
Today the Army is looking at aggressively pursing an enhanced version of a next generation system to a brigade within the next calendar year as well as other technologies that it hopes to introduce by 2011. In addition, the Army is seeking to decrease the cost of the system.
“The basic hardware of the current system costs around $32,000,” said Cummings. “When you add the development of items that go in to sustain that system, the cost is upwards of $75,000. That’s why we want to drive that cost down.”
Given the lessons learned from the current systems, the Army especially wants to focus on current commercial core capabilities that decrease the size of computers that also use less power. “This would mean huge changes in just these two things,” he said.
The concepts are revolutionary and changing the way warfare is fought. “People do not understand it until they actually see it,” Cummings said. “The soldier of tomorrow is quite different from the soldier of today. This is a huge step for the Army and where it is going in the future.” ♦
