By Ann Roosevelt
As part of Army modernization, the Future Combat System (FCS) Common Controller is in development to replace the unique controllers now associated with individual systems, a servic official said.
“We’re going to put all the [unmanned aerial and ground systems] on the program, a number of the sensors–the Tactical and Urban sensors and a number of ground combat vehicle functions could be done through remote operations, which are still to be determined,” Lt. Col. Darby McNulty, product Manager-FCS Common Controller, FCS Soldier Integration Lead, told Defense Daily recently.
The common controller will be part of the incremental development/fielding of the Brigade Combat Team Modernization strategy. It will not be ready for the first series of seven early sets including FCS Spin Outs for Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (IBCT) but will be a part of the incremental upgrades as time and the controller, progress.
The common controller will eventually have 17 different systems, McNulty said.
Every individual system in the Army now has its own unique individual controller, he said, and after the then-vice chief of staff said the service needed to move to a common controller because there was such a proliferation of hand-held devices, the FCS program decided to move to a common controller. Suitcase-size devices control many current force robots, UAS and sensors, so they are not always easy to use if you’re not near a vehicle.
Integrating all those systems on one device is challenging, he said. “About a year and a half ago, we switched to a spiral development within FCS. We’re running four spirals, each of which overlaps, over the next four years.”
With two or three soldier evaluations planned for each year, the design is incrementally improved based on feedback from soldiers, bringing more and more capability to the device. The evaluations take about three weeks.
“We just finished our Spiral One excursion with the [Army Evaluation Task Force] AETF 2nd Combined Arms Battalion,” at Ft. Bliss, Texas, he said.
Four systems were integrated on the Spiral One common controller: the iRobot [IRBT] Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SUGV), the Honeywell [HON] Class 1 unmanned aerial vehicle, the Textron [TXT] Urban Unattended Ground System (U-UGS) and the Lockheed Martin [LMT] Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment (MULE) vehicle.
“We also switched to a rapid prototyping model within spiral development so we established a quick capability–get it out in the field for safety releases, get feedback from soldiers and then you make it better next year,” McNulty said.
Within the FCS program, McNulty also is the conduit to the Program Executive Office-Soldier (PEO-Soldier) program working closely with the Ground Soldier Ensemble (GSE) team. This is to benefit from work the program office has already done over the past decade on Land Warrior and Future Force Warrior programs.
“We’re using the same batteries, so we’re not introducing more, and different types of batteries–Li 80s and Li 145s,” he said. “They are using the best available batteries now, period. So we’re using the same batteries for commonality.”
This commonality also means reducing the types of batteries soldiers need to carry and streamlines the supply chain.
The common controller works with PEO Soldier to answer questions and solve issues early in development, such as, how do you wear the unit? In an infantry unit, the need is for mobility. The controller is now man packable. “You try to put as little weight into the hands of soldiers as you possibly can and put the rest on the back,” he said.
The computer, radios and batteries are carried on the soldier’s back. The lightweight device to control the robot or fly a UAV is handheld and, with soldier feedback, soldiers said they like to carry the cased controller on their leg, as some soldiers now wear handguns.
The Spiral One controller has a 6.4-inch display. This was a quick, readily available capability. The office put four systems with the basic situational awareness package on it, and took it to the field.
“Right now, we’re moving rapidly through Spiral Two, and incorporated early soldier feedback into the design,” he said. “Instead of building a custom device, it’s Lockheed Martin and iRobot working together. iRobot’s the sub to Lockheed through the LSI.”
The Spiral Two version, in the field next summer, has changes, moving to a portrait view from a horizontal, landscape view. Plug in devices were built in to bring on capability. Also, the Spiral Two computer weighs two pounds and is considerably smaller than the eight-pound Spiral One version.
“You’ll see arming switches for armed assault-light, a machine gun–we don’t have it yet, but we have a place to do that so if you want to fire a Javelin or machine gun” it can be done, he said. There are also switches for a laser designator that will be put on the SUGV and the Class 1 UAV. They are already incorporated into the design.
Another facet of the controller is that the soldier can get at all the major control functions with his or her thumbs. “This is what soldiers told us. They love the keyboard for texting and other things,” McNulty said.
There’s unique mapping of the hardware and software-enabled control functions to the system you’re controlling, he said. There’s a big difference from a workload perspective– cognitive, physical, etc.–on whether you’re controlling a small robot, a big robot, a sensor field, or flying a UAV.
“We take the software plug-ins from the system we’re controlling and put them on the computer that’s on the back, and then map the control functions, whether it’s touch-screen software-enabled or whether it’s buttons that you use, so there’s some redundancy built in it. We tailor the control to the needs of the soldier that owns the platform.”
Eventually, all the battle command software will be put on the controller.
Also, the current need for multiple radios for different systems will be replaced in future by the Joint Tactical Radio System small form factor B radios for both the Common Controller and the Ground Soldier Ensemble.
“I have an open architecture and it’s plug and play, so I have a power distribution unit now that’s kind of bulky, but it’s set up so that I just flip a switch and plug in a new radio…Once we move to a common radio, this system becomes much less complex,” he said. That will happen in Spiral three.
“We’ll drop maybe 12 pounds off the back of the soldier in spiral two because this is much lighter,” he said. It’s not just weight; it’s how you distribute it. “If you put 15 pounds on the back of a soldier and it’s not worn properly, it can feel like 30 pounds; that’s why we’re working with the PEO Soldier team.”
The common controller will be built to take rough use, but don’t slam it against a pole, he said. It could be made to survive something like that but it would weigh something ilke 20 pounds and cost a lot, say, $200,000. “We want this eventually to be very low cost,” McNulty said.
“I would expect over time, things like the ground Soldier Ensemble and the Common Controller will become almost like commodities in the Army, so any soldier today can pick up a [Defense Advanced GPS Receiver] DAGR for GPS functions,” McNulty said.