The 2nd Infantry Division’s 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment (Manchu’s) soldiers in Iraq asked for and will receive the ability to pinpoint snipers in the next few weeks for their General Dynamics‘ [GD]-developed Land Warrior systems, a company official said.
“The Manchu’s are experiencing tremendous tactical advantages with Land Warrior and the combat power it brings to COIN operations is clear,” Col. Richard Hansen, project manager, Soldier Warrior, tells Defense Daily.
Developed by the Army’s Program Executive Office (PEO) Soldier and General Dynamics, Land Warrior consists of a helmet mounted display, a small computer for situational awareness and navigation and a headset with radio connectivity–networking soldiers to each other and to their Stryker vehicles–also built by General Dynamics.
Even though the Manchu’s are successful, the Land Warrior program is unfunded except for logistics support. The equipment’s success has caught the eye of another unit, which has requested Land Warrior, but no decision has been made.
“The Army has a strategic decision to reconsider: reinforce success or start over, Hansen said. “We can exploit the Manchu’s success with Land Warrior and field more leaders with this capability in the coming year. Or we can restart the acquisition process and prolong the gap for another five years. Sadly, if no resources emerge, we will pass again on connecting the dismounted Soldier to the GIG and start over with the acquisition process that will deliver years from now.”
The coming sniper detection capability for Land Warrior comes directly directly from feedback from deployed 4/9 Manchu soldiers, Army program officials and General Dynamics support personnel, Mark Showah, director of Integrated Systems Group for General Dynamics C4 systems, told Defense Daily.
“We heard about that [capability] gap two months ago,” he said. A prototype was developed and shown to the Army a month ago. “We just got an order last week for delivery of this system…and we’ll be delivering it in about two weeks.”
To find that solution General Dynamics went to industry to see if there was a way to get sniper location information into the Land Warrior system.
“That outlines the power of the Edge and the industry partners where we can determine what a gap is, work with industry to inform them of that gap, figure out a solution to fill that gap and get it out to the customer as quickly as possible.”
The Edge is a General Dynamics C4 Systems unit laboratory for developing and testing new and emerging technologies that could be worn and carried by warfighter. The Edge is premised on the idea that industry, government and academia can do more, and do more quickly by collaborating than by working independently.
BBN Technologies came in with the Boomerang Sniper Detection System it developed with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
“Now when a sniper fires in the vicinity of a Boomerang, that position report shows up as an icon on all the Land Warrior Systems in the network,” Showah said.
Another upgrade soldiers received as they deployed came from some suprising soldier feedback during 4/9 Manchu training at their home station at Ft. Lewis, Wash. This was their desire to send and receive text messages.
“We expected them to use voice and data, which they do,” Showah said. “But we also found they do an awful lot of text messaging, because when traditional voice comms aren’t working well the text messaging seems to work extremely well,” he said. “So the soldiers seem to rely on that text messaging a lot. A lot more than we expected. What they asked for, consequently, was an easier way to text message.”
General Dynamics put together a capability, and as the 4/9 Manchus deployed, they received small, inexpensive, disposable keypads they can plug directly into the system and text message from there. Soldiers like it, “but it’s not integrated into an existing box–it’s yet another box with yet another cable,” he said.
However, the proposed next generation Land Warrior capability will have an integrated text messaging capability. Showah said, “we incorporated a keyboard into the soldier control unit so now text is similar to what you do on a Blackberry.”
With Land Warrior, the Army expected to improve situational awareness and resolve some of the most common battlefield uncertainties: where am I, where are my friends, and where and who is the enemy, and soldier feedback the service hears is positive.
The Army will use soldier Land Warrior feedback from Iraq to build Ground Soldier System (GSS), the next-generation integrated, modular system that will also be completely integrated into the Army’s major modernization effort: Future Combat Systems.
On General Dynamics part, Showah said, “Absolutely we were hoping to hear that kind of feedback and consequently we have. What I’m taking away from it, is that primarily soldiers are using this as an overwhelming, unprecedented battle command and command and control capability. Leaders are using it to better manage troops and operations. It allows the troops to run their operations more quickly, thereby allowing lower fatigue. It allows them to do it with much more visibility to the battle space so they know where they are, and where their buddies are which dramatically lowers the potential for fratricide.”
The feedback also provides the company with ideas for system improvement.
“That’s the main value of having a system in theater does for us, as a developer, is that we get constructive criticism and feedback that soldiers are going to give us,” he said. “Everything we’ve done to improve the system is a direct result of feedback that’s been collected in theater.”
Of course, soldiers would like to see improvements such as reduced size, weight and power, something the company knew even as the 4/9 Manchus trained on Land Warrior systems.
To achieve that, “we embarked on an internal research and development program with some other partners of the Edge,” he said.
With feedback from PEO Soldier, and 4/9 Manchus, the company is proposing NextGen Land Warrior. While the Manchu system weighs about 10.5 pounds, the next generation system weighs less than seven pounds. The number of systems has been reduced, and some cabling eliminated.
This is the system General Dynamics will showcase at the Association of the United States Army annual conference in Washington, D.C., this week.
As capabilities grow, General Dynamics is also doing things to reduce the price. For example, Showah said, ” reducing the size weight and power, and the number of boxes and cables the soldier has dramatically reduces the price and by the way improves the reliability of the system because there’s less interconnect and less cables.”
Another factor in reducing price is to give soldiers just the capability they need. “We’re looking at in the next generation architecture a very thinned down solution that provides voice and data at the lowest echelon but doesn’t have all the battle command capability.” This means soldiers receive just the capability they need.
Showah said the company has tried to make it as easy as possible for the Army to make a decision to continue with Land Warrior. “We’ve reduced the price, size, power. We’ve got a next generation design system sitting on the shelf ready for them to procure at a lower cost which should be able to get the money.”
The company continues to solicit feedback from soldiers so it can keep advancing Land Warrior to stay on the cutting edge of technology.
This Edge concept really has blossomed quicker than expected, he said. “With Boomerang, if we’d gone down the traditional path of writing requirements, going through system engineering, preliminary and critical design reviews, the process would have taken much longer.”
Now, with an ability to take information directly from soldiers, pulse industry and prototype quickly, that allows the customer to validate that we got the requirements correct and that we’ve prototyped the correct thing, and if we hadn’t…it allows us to really quickly adjust the prototype and develop the right system much more rapidly.
“If we’re able to prototype quickly and hand soldiers rapid prototypes they can give us real feedback immediately and help us drive to those requirements and get it right the first time,” he said.
In fact, Showah said, the Edge is so successful, General Dynamics is expanding the concept beyond warrior systems to form Edge Battle Command and to other big system integration programs the company works on.