I remember seeing the original idea back at an AUSA annual meeting ten years ago, and getting a very distinct science fiction vibe. It looked cool. But I had to wonder about how useful it would be to the average joe.
The Army is lightening up and paring down technology for leg infantry. And restricting the most complicated stuff for leaders. Less ambitious than the goal I saw, the new goal may be more practical.
This article has a great description of a US battalion in Iraq using the gear:
I've just spent a week with Prior and the 4/9 (known as the "Manchus" since their assaults on China in 1901). And much to my surprise, a bunch of the soldiers in the unit are warming up to Land Warrior, especially now that the gizmo ensemble has been pared down and made more tactically relevant. So now the question is: can this once-doomed soldier-of-the-future ensemble spring back to life?
Troops can't be so bogged down with weight that they can't fight. And they can't be so focused on their computer screens that some low tech insurgent hits them on the head from behind with a rock.
In a sense we are lucky to have soldiers in combat to provide a ruthless assessment of the usefulness of the various components. Life and death outcomes will do that.
In the end, we may actually get something out of this project that helps our troops fight, win, and survive without saddling them with useless crap that some senior officer or politician with a defense contractor in their district wants to foist on troops. Peacetime procurement can do that.
And remember always, that superb training makes the most lethal land warrior. Expensive gear makes good troops even better and poor troops just more costly casualties.
UPDATE: A story on the cost of infantry:
In the 1940s, a GI went to war with little more than a uniform, weapon, helmet, bedroll and canteen. He carried some 35 pounds of gear that cost $170 in 2006 inflation-adjusted dollars, according to Army figures.
That rose to about $1,100 by the 1970s as the military added a flak vest, new weapons and other equipment during the Vietnam War.
Today, troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are outfitted with advanced armor and other protection, including high-tech vests, anti-ballistic eyewear, earplugs and fire-retardant gloves. Night-vision eyewear, thermal weapons sights and other gear makes them more deadly to the adversary. ...
Between 2012 and 2014, officials want troops to have head-to-toe protection, a weapon that can shoot around corners so soldiers don't have to expose themselves to their enemy and a helmet-mounted 1.5-inch computer screen showing maps of the battlefield.
Drawings of the gear — some parts already in prototype and in the field — look like futuristic "Master Chief," the human uber-soldier who battles aliens in the popular sci-fi video game Halo. Researchers prefer to call it "the F-16-on-legs concept," a nod to U.S. fighter jets.
The wide range in price — an estimated $28,000 to $60,000 a person — is partly because not all troops will have all of the equipment. Some of it, such as a planning tool, is only for unit leaders.
The Green Machine is no longer made of cogs that can be considered cannon fodder. And our enemies no longer mock us as too afraid to let our soldiers tangle with their so-called warriors up close. Our enemies, who favor the IED so they don't have to tangle with our soldiers, no longer mock our troops.
Well equipped and well trained, our soldiers and Marines dominate the modern battlefield.
