US soldiers hate Land Warrior

Here's the link:
www.popularmechanics.com...

From the article:

There's a half-billion dollars invested in the gear hanging off the heads, chests and backs of the soldiers of Alpha company. Digital maps displayed on helmet-mounted eyepieces show the position of all the men in the unit as they surround a block of concrete buildings and launch their attacks.

But as the men kick in doors, roundsup terror suspects and peal off automatic fire in deafening six-shot bursts, not one of the soldiers bothers to check his radio or look into the eyepiece to find his buddies on the electronic maps. "It's just a bunch of stuff we don't use, taking the place of useful stuff like guns," says Sgt. James Young, who leads a team of four M-240 machine-gunners perched on a balcony during this training exercise at Fort Lewis, Wash. "It makes you a slower, heavier target."

Obviously system includes a lot of gadgets the soldiers never use.

And even those don't seem to work very well.

I point the M-4 across the lot at a row of rental cars. I wait — and wait — for the enhanced gunsight to focus. It responds more like a cheap digital camera than an advanced piece of military gear. At this speed, the sight would be nearly useless in fast-moving urban combat.

The map showing soldiers' locations isn't exactly quick, either. I walk around the lot. My position on the map lags about a minute behind where I am in real time. That kind of delay wouldn't be too important in a long-range duel of sharpshooters. But in an Iraq-style firefight it could be lethal. "There are still a lot of glitches," admits Alpha company's Lt. John Gelineau.

I really don't understand what's the point about having the positions of soldiers with 1 minute delay? In one minute they will be far far away.

Plus the system costs 30 000$ per piece and IMO it can break quite easily that means there will be need for other milions of $$$ for replacement parts.



[edit on 12-5-2007 by longbow]

And that's the real problem, isn't it?

This apparent move by 'defense industry' to digitize the battlefield is, IMO, a backward step. The American IVIS device is something we Brits lust after and, to a certain extent, we are taking a step forward with the deployment of Bowman.

On an individual basis, whilst the 'idea' might look good on paper, and looks good on computer simulations, the reality on the battlefield is something else completely.

I would suspect that the system 'server' (if that is the right terminology) is grossly underpowered because if every soldier's equipment is constantly updating LOCSTAT, wpn states, unit formations, radio traffic etc, at the same time, the system simply cannot handle the vast amount of information coming into it at the same time.

Not entirely true. A mobile command vehicle based with one or two super-computers (the F-22A has two supercomputers on board, so it isn't far-fetched to have them in a vehicle for digital battlefield command) could easily take in the amount of information required. As time progresses so does computer technology so whether or not the information is too much really doesn't matter. What does matter is that the system is glitchy and not at all trust worthy.

A lot of money is being spent on a system that our soldiers don't even use, can't even use properly. It is true that the idea for a fully digital battlefield is an advantage, but I believe that a lot more testing has to be done before we can field this equipment. It needs to become:

1)More integrated and modular
2)Light-weight
3)Cheaper
4)User-interface friendly
5)Faster (Speed makes all the difference and should be the number one focus of things, the more integrated and modular things get the faster they'll get)

It's a good idea, but they just need to work out all the kinks, because even one kink can cost the life of a soldier.

Shattered OUT...

I would just like to point out that the generation that is demo-ing the land warrior system is not the generation the system is designed for. Its designed for kids like me who are the "future warriors". We as the teenagers of the new generation are much more adaptable to digital technology, due to the fact that we are all rabid multitaskers who can configure digital tech to are liking at a seconds notice.

Summary and general point: The new generation of soldiers will like the land warrior more due to their digital "conditioning".

I highly doubt many of those soldiers testing it are older than 30, so I don't think they are not adaptable to digital technology.
The point is - they have no time to work with computer during the combat; the visor obstructs the view, the gear is too bulky and heavy etc. Not to mention the glitches and the fact that if enemy captures one gear he's instantly able to "see" the position of all soldiers in unit.

Just keep in mind that we've got to start somewhere. Although the current incarnation might not be practical, the idea is still good and could be very practical ten or twenty years down the road.

Look at tanks. When the debuted they were terrible, and had many of the same problems. They were slow, expensive, and weren't easy to handle. About twenty years later they're dominating the battlefield.

Land Warrior may not be right for our troops now, but I feel that we should continue to research digitalization of the battlefield so that someday it will be practical.

I feel it would be better to just equip the squad leaders or top 2 guys with this...of course a MUCH MUCH more lighter and advanced version. Take out useless features and just have the base useful stuff. The rest of the soldiers should just carry a PDA that is "plugged in" and needs a special password to log into....or something of that nature so if dropped they enemy doesn't get real time feed. You can't make every soldier a command center because than it makes the protection of the "command center" much more difficult because every soldiers capture could instantly compromise the whole battle. They should work on making stronger ultra light ultra comfortable system for the soldiers.

Americans have never really understood the importance of "Auftragstaktick", which is one of the reasons they don't do so well in battle.Instead they perfect increasingly more insidious & expensive 'command and control' technologies.Its as if this is the only way they can measure progress.

Its all about the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned every one about when he left office last century.

en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by Morkoc96
I feel it would be better to just equip the squad leaders or top 2 guys with this...

That will just identify the leaders to the enemy, much like having antennas on only certain vehicles.

So what happens when the bad guys picks this equipment up off a downed soldier? don't they now have the capability of seeing where the rest of the unit is also.

Any equipment that aids your situational awareness from moment to moment is great ( they are after all shooting up soldiers with experimental vaccines that are likely to kill thousands of them over the next decade) and will help certainly help but only if it processes the information and provides the soldier with useful information he can act on and do not have to spend time interpreting.

If helmet could be equipped all round with some kind of direction locator's ( observes either muzzle flash/ sound/smoke/) that could tell the soldier who's firing at him from where and what fire seems to be best aimed that could help him no end to best direct his own fire. If that could be done the soldiers ears will now be 'freed' for direct voice communication with the team by means of proper sound filters so that the overwhelming noise of combat does not have to break up team cohesion and thus allowing for far better communicated squad tactical responses while under fire.

There is probably a host of such improvements that could be made but i still think they best you can do ( when your likely to receive short range fire out in the open from concealed positions) is to produce the type of full body armor that could make soldiers quite invulnerable to small arms fire, aimed at their center of mass, at normal urban combat ranges. If systems could be devised that allows for even the prevention of disabling hits ( shoulder, arms, lower legs etc) , without greatly impeding mobility, soldiers could much better direct their fire and attention in the knowledge that they can now absorb the return fire without ill effect.

I don't understand how one can spend billions on embassies and air bases and submarines when you can not provide a occupation force numbering one hundred thousand with Interceptor body armor that sells for $1600 or less. For the price of one F-22 ( and throw in a submarine, or two, if you want Dragon Skin or the like that will stop almost anything in almost any amount at anything remotely resembling combat ranges) you could have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives who do not become subject to retaliation due to the loss of American lives.

When one does these types of math it quickly becomes obvious that the idea is to get as many as possible GI's killed while retaining almost reasonable excuses. I guess some in the American military establishment are not content to wait for the vaccines to kill or disable them...

Stellar

First off, Land Warrior is dead as of May 2007. Concepts and technologies left over from that project are now in the Future Force Warrior program.

I think this article just goes to highlight what a fraud and a waste of money these high-tech programs really are. These do nothing to make troops' lives easier and make the losses of individual soldiers that much more costly. The death of ten guerrilla warriors is not as costly to the insurgents as a single U.S. soldier is to us.

It is definitely time for the entire U.S. military to rethink its military doctrine and theory. It has fallen into a technocratic spell and has forgotten that warfare is still a matter of making a bang and converting it into political decision. Believe it all you want, but wars cannot be effectively and efficiently fought with small numbers of professional soldiers geared with high-tech systems and weaponry. Wars are won by militaries that have the best (not the most) training and abundant economic and financial backing. Unless there's a massive budget availiable and the technology is entrenched in civilian society, the Future Force program is impossible to achieve.

I disagree with your view of that sweetmonicaido.

I can train 15-guys to be the best fighters in the world with sticks and go against 15-guys in the field armed with machine-guns and suddenly you are missing 15-well trained stick fighters...

On a battlefield you have to have command and control... Like alot of systems that were scoffed at in the 80's like the Paveway laser guided bomb. TOTALLY scoffed and ridiculed and now the technology used to make that is a standard in our militaries making them safer and more effective.
Watch the Pentagon wars and you will get a good idea about the political bickering and infighting in EVERY weapon system we bring to the field.

Main problem with ALOT of gear is you overload your trooper. You also give the enemy perfect oppertunity to use that gear and intel against you with one captured or dead soldier... But what they CAN do is take that tech of what they learned today and make it better tomorrow... Security will be the utmost problem since you cannot have a trooper stop on a field to type in a code to get the latest mapping. He needs it then. There. Now... Not having to wait. whip out a keypad and type in a code that could also end up being useless taking a bullet round or shrapnel. I think they will end up having to use some kind of retinal scanning or maybe even a pheromone scent giving off by troops using gear that may have a sensor on the clothing or at the exhalation as the body expels a chemical... (Hey... This guy smells like BEER!!! **The shirt says** HE MUST BE AMERICAN!!! Open up the command line!!!!!).... Or the adverse... (Hey... The shirt says) This guy smells like he just walked 8 hours behind a donkey and does not smell like beer!!! INSURGENT!!! (And locks out the command line and erases the software/firmware and maybe overload the capacitors to overwhelm even the hardware to make the whole thing useless...

Ok. Long winded there I am sorry. I brainstorm for a living and that is what all these "programs" are for... Just cause one gets cancelled does not mean it was a waste of money.

Holy Crap...we went from "LAND WARRIOR SUCKS!"...to the United States Military needs to re-think its entire strategy and stop sucking at life...

First of all...the Land Warrior system DOES suck. I know. I HAVE USED IT. Everything in the first post was right on the money true.

ok, now down to business...

...NCO voice ON...

sweatmonicaido....you are wrong as two boys screwing on the white house lawn...LAND WARRIOR IS IN IRAQ....right now...as we speak...and entire Stryker Brigade out of Ft Lewis, WA is using the system right now.

They are not using ALL of it...the enhanced optical sight was scrapped...gone until they can fix some serious problems with it.

But as of May 2007...its IN COMBAT.

Also, the Future Force Warrior concept/program...is completely achieveable. Its not THAT advanced people. All they are doing is networking existing systems together to enhance command and control on the battlefield. No one is changing the way the US Army trains/fights.

If you strip all that wiz-bang gear away from a Soldier/Marine...I guarantee you they will whip the shiite out of any of their counterparts on planet earth. Thats just how it works. They dont issue you Land Warrior at basic training and say "have fun"...hell no. You get your rifle. Thats it.
You learn to FIGHT. period.

When you get to your unit...then you get the toys.

I think this article just goes to highlight what a fraud and a waste of money these high-tech programs really are. These do nothing to make troops' lives easier and make the losses of individual soldiers that much more costly. The death of ten guerrilla warriors is not as costly to the insurgents as a single U.S. soldier is to us.

Ok..here we go hero. Never. Under ANY circumstance...do I give a rats-ass about how costly a loss is to the enemy vs. the cost to me when I lose a Soldier. I don't care. My job is to accomplish the mission and bring home my Soldiers. Period. Whatever my mission is...we'll do it...and we'll al go home. Losing ONE Soldier in my opinion, is tragic. But there is no way to compare those two things. Especially in the war on terrorism. Islamic Extremists dont CARE if they die. Hell, its a good thing to sacrifice their life to Allah...and thats great...me and my Land Warrior system..we will definatly give them every opportunity to die.


...NCO voice OFF...

now, on to someone with an intelligent opinion...AbitTweaked...I liked your comparison with the stick fighters...but The US Army like to take those stick fighters...and give THEM machine guns...that way if a situation ever arises where they dont have the machine gun...or its broken, etc...they whip out sticks and kill everyone. =)

And yes, all of that crap overloads the troop...

I'm done...I've done enough yelling for one day...


...Sapper Out...

some of my ffriends in the marine core used something in the beggining of the iraq war called Blue (????something) Blue Tracker?? it basically showed where everyother US military vehicle be it jeep, platoons, Amtrac, convoy, helecopter, planes etc.. were. THey found it useful. The stuff was mounted inside their humvees but. They could mark enemy positions, mine fields, ambush spots etc also, so it was a great way to share information.

Not so fast in real time which I think the land warriour/future warrior programs need to work on to make them more effective. THey should watch more video games to see how it should work, and then reverse engineer the ideas so that they do work in real life.

Originally posted by StellarX
you could have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives who do not become subject to retaliation due to the loss of American lives.

Uh? If your referring to the war in Iraq we haven't lost hundreds of thousands of people. In fact not even five thousand people.

Originally posted by sweatmonicaIdo
First off, Land Warrior is dead as of May 2007. Concepts and technologies left over from that project are now in the Future Force Warrior program.
I think this article just goes to highlight what a fraud and a waste of money these high-tech programs really are.

This one might be but the implication that all high tech programs are wasteful is going too far. The advantage the German army derived from furnishing some large numbers of their armored vehicles with the expensive radio's of the time played a very large part in their tactical successes against generally superior Russian tanks as you probably well know. As i am sure you will agree one can do consistent good work on basic training and equipment but be outdone because the enemy operates fighting systems ( rifles are high tech compared to bows...) that allows a soldier with the same general ability in skill to fight with a huge advantage. Sorry if this seems condescending as that was not the intent; i am sure someone might find benefit by this typing.

These do nothing to make troops' lives easier and make the losses of individual soldiers that much more costly.

Much more costly to whom? Would you care to be 'lost' because your government did not think they could benefit by keeping you alive in the long run for a few extra dollars? Why do elite formations of units do damage out of all proportion to their numbers and equipment? How do elite formations gather experience if they are not given the tools to survive and learn? The US defense budget is certainly large to do away with human soldiers entirely but while they still send them to war i will point out how they choose not to bother much in keeping them alive.

The death of ten guerrilla warriors is not as costly to the insurgents as a single U.S. soldier is to us.

But every American killed or maimed is a victory that inspires them to keep on throwing ten or twenty men into battle to achieve that casualty. If this was a general war with a aggressive army on the American shores then it's justified to lose one man for twenty ( obviously the enemy has to means to reach your shores and thus clearly has great ability) but when your attacking someone who never attacked you every man you lose is a political body blow as American policy makers are slowly discovering. If you want to get involved in illegal foreign adventures like the one in Iraq there is no forgiving the criminal intent behind not properly equipping and armoring American fighting men.

It is definitely time for the entire U.S. military to rethink its military doctrine and theory.

In my opinion it is always such a time and those who do not consistently evaluate it are bound to run into trouble as soon as they can not longer force decisions based on brute force or terror. The US armed forces have recently shown that they can not deploy sufficient combat forces to force decisions by normal means and has in the last decade depended on little other than terror.

It has fallen into a technocratic spell and has forgotten that warfare is still a matter of making a bang and converting it into political decision.

The armed forces have not but their political oversight have forced out those who know how wars should be fought and have not provided those who still know with sufficient forces or equipment to win the battles they are required to fight. Military people may not care much about the average grunt but they do like 'winning' and when they do not one one should ask how and why they were moved into situations they could not prevail in. Warfare have been said to be a continuation of politics by other means but i think it's more often than not a end in itself for those who would change the social fabric of human societies.

Believe it all you want, but wars cannot be effectively and efficiently fought with small numbers of professional soldiers geared with high-tech systems and weaponry.

I do believe that wars can be fought that way and i think history makes it quite clear that it was and should be. As weapons become ever more deadly you need less and less men to manage a given volume of firepower and ever more training and knowledge to effectively deal with such firepower. To send untrained men into battle is to throw them away and even the Russians did not commit newly raised formations ( men who started their training when the war broke out) to combat for SIX MONTHS. Having more men you can conscript and commit to battle after they had received training does not negate the fact that modern armies require large volumes of professional soldier if they are going to stand their ground without taking horribly disproportionate casualties.

Wars are won by militaries that have the best (not the most) training and abundant economic and financial backing. Unless there's a massive budget availiable and the technology is entrenched in civilian society, the Future Force program is impossible to achieve.

I would add that in this day and age you not only need the support of your fighting men, if their professional it's easier to fight illegal wars hence the drive for such armies, but also a public that believes in 'the cause'.

The fault is not with technology but obviously with 'democratic' governments who attempt to fight wars without the consent of the people they are supposedly representing.

Stellar

Originally posted by Morkoc96
Uh? If your referring to the war in Iraq we haven't lost hundreds of thousands of people. In fact not even five thousand people.

Well in the current war the toll is around two divisions worth of combat power ( those holding the guns and firing the shells) and the toll of the previous one is now in the hundreds of thousands of disabled that will never again serve in the US armed forces due to medical problems relating to those vaccines they were all forced to take.

Stellar

Back to the philosophical realm, there is an art and science to war, each must be carefully balanced with the other. The US military in in danger (it's not there yet) of overlying on technology and losing sight of the basic elements of combat fighting. Don't get me wrong, certain systems which increase situational awareness and therefore effectiveness are great but with the focus on more and new technology (especially autonomous systems) the role of individual soldier should not be diminished. I'm not saying that's what's currently happening, it's just something to look out for...

[edit on 16-5-2007 by WestPoint23]

This thread has developed in to a very interesting debate, but we do need to rethink the technology angle.

Everybody realises that it is the common puddle jumping, mud skipping infantryman with a bayonet on his rifle, that wins wars.

Once all the planes, guns and tanks have done their job, it is the PBI that engages the enemy at close quarter, oft in fierce hand to hand combat, to take and hold a piece of ground deemed important by some unseen general in a nice safe cushy billet behind the lines.

The PBI need to be equipped with the best weaponry, ammunition and personal equipment, that money can buy. Ballistic armour and helmets need to be lightweight but capable of stopping .50 rounds. NBC protection should be incorporated in normal cammie clothing. Personnel should be allowed to purchase the footwear of their choice, provided it is up to the job.

They need to have a self filtering water system that does not need replenning every couple of mouthfulls. Food needs to have a high energy
content and taste good.

What the PBI does not need, are gizmos that attach to helmets, webbing or weaponry, weigh more than the PLCE kit they usually carry but above all, any electronic devices issued, should be top notch, work when required, be user friendly and not be a distraction to the end user when in the middle of a firefight!

In my opinion, those who design and manufacture said kit, should be forced to conduct realistic training under simulated war conditions to 'experience' what others do for real.

The modern battlefield is not the place to test such equipment as it may cost lives, and that is not a price worth paying - by any parent.