It looks as if high speed oper­a­tors are about to go dig­i­tal — very digital.

According to PEO Soldier pro­gram man­ager for the Ground Soldier System — the son of the can­celled Land Warrior pro­gram — a Special Forces bat­tal­ion will be out­fit­ted with the high-tech net­work gear next year for use in com­bat oper­a­tions. Col. Will Riggins said the unit is as yet unknown, but this time instead of each team leader get­ting the suite of gear, each SF team mem­ber will be issued the Soldier Warrior system.

“It’ll be a new use for that sys­tem,” Riggins said. “The suite we’ll be giv­ing them is pretty sim­i­lar to what we’ve done for OEF.”

So the oper­a­tors will get a Soldier-worn com­puter packed with Army bat­tle com­mand soft­ware with an improved graph­i­cal user inter­face, a network-linked radio with an “over the hori­zon” capa­bil­ity — in other words the Special Forces vari­ant will have SatCom built in — “so that we’re not restricted to line of sight.”

“One of the things we’ll be work­ing with the unit on as we begin to inte­grate into their for­ma­tion is going to be how we can smartly choose what goes over the line and how often it goes over,” Riggins explained, adding that oper­a­tors won’t have to wield that cum­ber­some weapon sight that’s cur­rently part of been cut from the Land Warrior suite.

“That was a big les­son learned is that right now the tech­nol­ogy isn’t ready,” Riggins said. “The biggest rea­son is that right now we’re restricted to cables,” he explained, adding that PEO is try­ing to go wire­less with all the LW components.

“Once we’re there I think we’re going to have another huge jump in capa­bil­ity,” he said.

Riggins said the SF guys will get the same con­fig­u­ra­tion that the Army’s 5th Brigade of the 2nd ID in Iraq Afghanistan right now — which is not too dif­fer­ent from the 4/9 suite in terms of weight and complexity.

“We’re not see­ing any sub­stan­tial change in the foot­print or the weight of that sys­tem,” he said.

– Christian

I’ve ener­gized the grid, so to speak, on this small arms at Wanat issue, but another inter­est­ing find­ing in the draft report is this force­ful demand for water purifi­ca­tion solu­tions for troops from the indi­vid­ual to the small unit:

The absence of effec­tive crew (squad or pla­toon) water purifi­ca­tion and indi­vid­ual sol­dier water purifi­ca­tion equip­ment adversely con­strained oper­a­tions at COP Kahler. After 235 years of U.S. Army com­bat and field oper­a­tions, it is inex­cus­able that the U.S. Army still lacks the abil­ity for deployed sol­diers to ster­il­ize their own drink­ing water in suf­fi­cient quan­ti­ties in hot weather cli­mates uti­liz­ing a man-portable, hand-carried, light­weight, reli­able and effec­tive water purifi­ca­tion system. 

The author sug­gested the indi­vid­ual SteriPen sys­tem, which puri­fies water using UV light, and other eas­ily portable solu­tions that can purify water in high vol­umes that are read­ily avail­able on the com­mer­cial mar­ket. Never once in the field have I seen a camp­ing type water puri­fier unless it was a piece of per­sonal equipment.

The only pro­gram I’ve been able to find on the sub­ject from PEO Soldier is the Individual Soldier Hydration pro­gram which is pur­chas­ing can­teens and CamelBaks…no purifi­ca­tion other than the old school tabs is mentioned.

All sol­diers going on detached, iso­lated ser­vice in a semi-arid envi­ron­ment must be habit­u­ally equipped with ade­quate indi­vid­ual water-purification equip­ment; and a squad/platoon capa­ble water purifi­ca­tion sys­tem that can be car­ried in a HMMWV (but that doesn’t require an entire HMMWV to trans­port the sys­tem!) must be fielded by the U.S. Army. Had such a capa­bil­ity been present at Wanat, the Platoon could have uti­lized the large quan­tity of water avail­able at Wanat (as the ANA did). This glar­ing defi­ciency needs to be imme­di­ately addressed by the U.S. Army Program Executive Officer-Soldier, at both a crew (squad or pla­toon) and indi­vid­ual sol­dier level. 

– Christian

A French com­pany with a U.S. part­ner has begun mar­ket­ing its state-of-the-art sur­veil­lance sys­tem, in the U.S., and this week put it on dis­play at AUSA in Washington.

The IR Revolution 360 is a ther­mal imag­ing cam­era that rotates rapidly and gen­er­ates a com­plete 360-degree ther­mal image every sec­ond, accord­ing to Richard Pettegrew, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer with IEC Infrared Systems of Ohio, the American part­ner of HGH Infrared Systems. What that means, he said, is a con­tin­u­ous, real-time flow of ther­mal images.

And if thats not enough, you can load the sys­tem with motion detec­tors, range find­ers, and range loca­tors to help detect a tar­get and ID its loca­tion, Pettegrew said. The sys­tem can detect a per­son up to three kilo­me­ters away, and even while con­tin­u­ing to gen­er­ate 360-degree images it can lock on to a fixed tar­get for closer scrutiny, he said.

So you can find your tar­get, you can assess it, and while youre doing that you have the ben­e­fit of per­sis­tent sur­veil­lance all the way around, he said.

According to SecurityInfoWatch.com, the IR Revolution 360 is the secu­rity industry’s first 360-degree line-scan panoramic infrared cam­era.
Here’s some video footage:

– Bryant Jordan

It’s like see­ing two peo­ple that you’re really con­fi­dent are just right for each other.

I was walk­ing through the war­rior toy bazaar known at Modern Day Marine at Quantico when, in one of the gadget-filled rooms, I came across the HULC — Human Universal Load Carrier — a battery-powered exoskele­ton that will let a grunt carry up to 200 pounds of gear on his back up to 20 kilo­me­ters. You can even run seven miles per hour with it — 10 mph in short bursts — said Keith Maxwell of Lockheed Martin, which ear­lier this year entered into a deal with HULC maker Berkeley Bionics to develop the sys­tem for ground troops.

But just one room over I spied a back­pack that slid up and down on rails as its wearer walked or ran; the ergonomic design not only relieves stress on the wearer, but the up-and-down move­ment gen­er­ates up to 40 watts of elec­tric­ity.

Now I don’t know if the power-generating back­pack could be a con­tin­u­ous energy-source for the battery-powered exoskele­ton — thereby elim­i­nat­ing the HULC’s need for recharged or new bat­ter­ies — but I thought the two should get to know each other.

Marty Belcher, lead pack designer for Lightning Packs LLC of Stafford, Pa., hadn’t seen the HULC as of late yes­ter­day, but he sure seemed inter­ested when told about the sys­tem. Over at the Berkeley loca­tion, engi­neer Russ Angold — com­pany vice pres­i­dent of engi­neer­ing and HULC demon­stra­tor — told me he was “very aware” of the electricity-generating pack. And he hap­pily pock­eted Belcher’s busi­ness card — which I showed him.

Could this be the begin­ning of a beau­ti­ful friendship?

— Bryant Jordan

Through the years I’ve seen a good deal of ground bots being devel­oped for troops in the zone. But I’ve never seen one as seem­ingly resilient and sim­ply func­tional as the Recon Robotics Recon Scout XT.

Weighing in at 1.2lbs and able to with­stand a drop from three sto­ries up, the Recon Scout XT can shoot real time video day or night. Its sig­nal goes through walls no prob­lem and the con­troller is no big­ger than a stan­dard com­pany com­mand radio.

So far Army Special Forces and SEALs have some, as well as some civil­ian law enforce­ment agen­cies. Looks like a good piece of gear for Joes and grunts too.

– Christian

You gotta love the chutz­pah of a com­pany so con­tro­ver­sial that they just go ahead and dou­ble down with a more aggres­sive product.

At Modern Day Marine yes­ter­day, Ward and I strolled up to the Taser International booth and I saw this thing that looked like a cross between an elec­tric switch­ing sta­tion and a Claymore mine — which is pretty much with this thing is…

Called the SHOCKWAVE, Taser has devel­oped what it calls an “area denial” non-lethal weapon that fea­tures up to 18 shocker nodes that can go six-at-a-time or all at once. Standing up to 100 meters away, a trooper on over­watch can zap a bad guy and hold him there jit­ter­ing on the ground until Joe’s gone over to see why the intruder didn’t have the proper pass­word.

Taser reps tell DT that the sys­tem has been tested at full power on a pig who had no ill effects (I asked whether there was some resid­ual BBQ from the test, but was rebuffed with a chuckle) and even a cou­ple Taser employ­ees stepped into the SHOCKWAVE’s path for a go (a reminder: be in the office at 8:30am from now on, okay?).

No word yet on mil­i­tary use, but if the con­tro­versy over Taser effects con­tin­ues, maybe we’ll see F-22’s drop­ping elec­tro JDAMs soon.

– Christian

Like the old song says, “Every pic­ture tells a story, don’t it?”

A dig­i­tal cam­era being used by troops in Afghanistan and Iraq pro­duces pic­tures can tell incred­i­bly detailed sto­ries: exact time of day taken, longitude/latitude of both shooter and sub­ject, direc­tion of the cam­era aim, and even 16 sec­onds of audio per photo, so that the user can note crit­i­cal information.

“You get every­thing you need in three sec­onds,” said Jim Kidd, vice pres­i­dent of Geo Tactical Solutions of Parker, Colo. Everything is stored on a mem­ory disk and can be turned over to intel offi­cials for analy­sis. “This way, you get back into the rear and the intel peo­ple don’t have you sit­ting for hours going over what you saw.”

The Ricoh 500SE-M Tactical Digital Camera is the heart of the sys­tem. It comes with a GPS capa­bil­ity devel­oped by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and is com­pat­i­ble with the range of map­ping soft­ware and pro­grams, includ­ing Google Earth and Falcon View, Kidd said.

The camera’s acces­sories include tele­scopic lenses, a night-vision lens and a range finder that cap­tures the dis­tance between shooter and tar­get and IDs the target’s exact lat­i­tude and lon­gi­tude. Even on its own, the cam­era records its own loca­tion every five sec­onds, and specif­i­cally notes its lat/long when­ever a photo is taken, accord­ing to Kidd.

For Marines and Soldiers out on patrol, the cam­era is a con­tin­u­ously updated log. Once back at base, the disc can be put into a com­puter and the entire route of the patrol can be super­im­posed over a zoom-in/zoom-out map, with each spot where a pic­ture clearly marked; a click on the mark and the image appears as a pop-up.

“We’ve got about 1,000 of these down­range right now in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Kidd said.

– Bryant Jordan

From mis­sile defenses to parachutes…you never know where Defense Tech will take you.

It sort of jibes with Noonan’s last video post — which I’m still wip­ing the tears off my face from laugh­ing so hard — but the Army has begun field­ing — for the first time in 50 years — a new para­chute for its gen­eral pur­pose air­borne forces. By that I mean, it’s a replace­ment for the 1950s-era T-10 “mass tac­ti­cal, non-maneuverable para­chute system.”

The new para­chute — devel­oped by Natick — takes up a bunch more sur­face area than the T-10 and slows the decent of a Soldier by nearly 50 per­cent, PEO Soldier says. One Soldier was quoted as say­ing it looks like you’re float­ing down on a fit­ted bed sheet, since instead of the old-school rounded canopy, the T-11 sports a more squared off one.

Now, offi­cials say this new chute is designed for today’s heaver Soldier with more gear and helps increase the Soldier’s effec­tive­ness in the field by giv­ing him a much less jar­ring ride to the ground.

The T-11 Parachute : Soldiers Speak from PEO Soldier on Vimeo.

Check out the PEO Soldier video — I don’t know about you, but I might feel a bit like a sit­ting duck float­ing down into enemy ter­ri­tory so slowly like that. But then again, I’ve never jumped out of a per­fectly good airplane.

– Christian

Although they share a name, one is a mod­ern take on an old idea and the other is well, just plain different.

The Pistol Bayonet from LaserLyte in con­junc­tion with Ka-Bar knives evokes mem­o­ries of child­hood vis­its to muse­ums fea­tur­ing such odd­i­ties as muz­zle load­ing pis­tols fes­tooned with saber-style blades under the bar­rel. Pistols have been sport­ing rails for quite awhile now so I guess it was really only a mat­ter of time before some­one attached a blade. The 2.75 inch blade fits on medium to large pis­tols with rails and slides on and off with the press of two but­tons. It fea­tures a Black Teflon coated car­bon steel blade and comes with poly­mer sheath.

Delta Assault Technologies, Inc. has intro­duced the Delta Bayonnette. Attach to the busi­ness end of a long arm, this non-lethal device stuns with 500,000 volts of elec­tric­ity (you have to enun­ci­ate each syl­la­ble of that word when you are talk­ing 500,000 volts). Consisting of a fore­grip that attaches to any Picatinny/Weaver style rail and a DAT stun muz­zle brake, it is designed to fit pri­mar­ily M4-style weapons. Yes, those probes stick­ing off the end of the muz­zle brake are the shock barbs. Please note: The prod­uct may not be legal in all localities.

– Soldier Systems

My col­league Colin Clark and I stum­bled across a cool tech­nol­ogy Global Situational Awareness at the Navy League con­fer­ence. Offered by DRS Technologies, its a geospa­tial infor­ma­tion sys­tem that also allows shar­ing of data from almost any source UAV videos, schemat­ics, pho­tos, SAR, IR etc. on a pretty sim­ple touch­screen. The imported data can be over­laid on the geospa­tial data and used for mis­sion plan­ning and a host of other applications.

As soft­ware engi­neer Michael Bridges shows, you can call up a region and slap on it over­lay after over­lay, show­ing you topog­ra­phy, ele­va­tion, streets and high­ways. If you dont like a birds eye view, hell flip the image on its side, any side.

Want to see what a Predator is watch­ing, or per­haps cam­eras mounted on a guard post or tower? A tap of the menu along the side of the screen and the stream­ing video appears on the map screen. Another menu tap and Bridges can use a fin­ger to plot a path­way reflect­ing the move­ments of oppos­ing forces. A com­man­der using the Integrated Tactical Command and Control Console could send all, or just part, of the images before him to the com­puter screens of other commanders.

The con­soles hard­ware has been under devel­op­ment for about three years, the soft­ware about one, Hodges said. Currently, the sys­tem can han­dle about 10 appli­ca­tions at the same time, but the com­pany already is work­ing on an even more mus­cu­lar sys­tem that could han­dle an infi­nite num­ber of applications.

The base is com­prised of U.S. Geological Survey maps, he said, but a com­man­der with his own data, col­lected by his own peo­ple and sources, would be able to load it into the sys­tem and work with it on the over­sized map.

Bridges said the con­sole may get a try­out at this years Trident Warrior exer­cise, which the Naval Network Warfare Command con­ducts to test the Navys newest com­mu­ni­ca­tion technologies.

The touch screen allows fast and sim­ple manip­u­la­tion of the data. For the rest, the video demon­strates it bet­ter than we can describe it. Anderson Cooper and CNN eat your hearts out.

– Bryant Jordan