Friday, August 23, 2019

Enabling the Combat REMF

Comprehensive camera coverage from the outside of armored vehicles will allow VR-equipped troops inside to see "through" the armor in any direction:

If the Carmel is successfully implemented in existing armored vehicles, new vehicles, including crewless (remotely controlled/autonomous) ones would follow. The Carmel concept already envisions a third crew member sitting behind the two vehicle operators to control nearby crewless vehicles.

This capability--along with a resilient battlefield internet--would go a long way to making it possible to use reachback technology to have a virtual squad operating remote weapon stations in an infantry fighting vehicle under certain circumstances, as I described in Infantry magazine.

Note that the Russians claim to have developed an unmanned T-72. Russia has quite the dilemma: they can't afford to lose troops and they can't afford to build unmanned or robotic vehicles.

UPDATE: More on Carmel.