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Future Army Battle Uniforms - Wired, Lethal
ssyladin writes "CNN is running an article about the future US army battle dress, code-named 'Scorpion'. It says that "..soldiers of 2011 will step into wired uniforms that incorporate all the equipment they need. The uniforms will monitor vital signs and plug them into a massive network of satellites, unmanned planes and robotic vehicles the military has planned." There will be sensors to monitor heartrate and blood-pressure, built-in tourniquets, a HUD to connect to GPS info, overhead maps, infrared and starlight cameras, and even the venerable M16 rifles are slated for an overhaul."
I'm glad to see they are going to get rid of the M16. Hopefully they'll replace it with something that's a bit more reliable. Having your rifle jam after a swim is not a feature.
They may finally be able to avoid too many civilian casualties and "friendly fire", wouldn't they ?
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
This seems to be just your average pork barrel gee whiz military contracting.
suddenly I feel very tired
Definitely too many things to go wrong! GPS and heartbeat maybe, so they know where to collect the bodies?? But relying on all that electronics makes grunts too vulnerable to EMP. There's no substitute for a reliable weapon in the hands of a well trained soldier.
If I was a soldier, with the current state of technology, I wouldn't want any sort of automatic tourniquet built into my clothes. I'd rather bleed and wait for the medic.
He painted a unicorn in outer space. I'm askin' ya, what's it breathin'?
Woefully under equipped tatty soldiers in 3rd world countries with 40 year old weaponary in 2011 ?
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
It freaks me out a little bit, why should a country that is allready so powerful still invest so heavyly in arms. who needs these arms? what for? There is nobody strong enough to challenge the US and nobody will be in the foreseeable future.
As a non american i feel threatened.
Am i to be 'liberated' next?
I seem to remember seeing this hashed over various times in the past. It sounds great and all, but when you give all this crazy crap to a marine and ask him what he thinks, he says "This is 27 pounds I *don't* need." (Well, he may not say that if his CO is around, but that's what he's thinking.)
Technology is great and all, but until they can pack it all down to a few ounces, I really don't see it taking off. Every soldier knows how much burden something like just an extra pound adds to a pack. It can really make a difference. In the end it seems to always come down to the battery. They can shrink LCD screens, keyboards, earpieces, whatever. But to have a useful lifetime they still need a heavy battery pack and I think that's what's really holding this back.
The military is all about "total information access" or whatever they call it. But in fact, sheer information alone is useless. I was at Quantico a few years ago presenting a research project and during a presentation, the director of this program emphasized that current technology gives them boatloads of data, the rub is in making sense of it and presenting in a useful way -- both to the soldier and to the people at base camp (or whatever.) So just strapping a GPS module, encrypted digital radio, digicam, etc. on a soldier's back isn't neccessarily useful for anyone involved. Somehow you've got to figure out how to make it all useful.
What military weapon has not yet been described as a "video game" by the press? I'm getting kind of tired of this.
Imagine half the US army's uniforms activating their automated tourniqets at once, whilst it would no doubt be hilarious to watch it probably wouldn't do them much good
Extended Warranty? How can I lose!
...None of this is going to do much against terrorist attacks.
The army very much thinks that playing video games makes good soldiers -- even way back in the 80s, playing Space Invaders and Asteroids trained a whole generation of F14 pilots how to use a joystick, AWACS & nuke sub operators how to read their screens -- but not the usual grunt with a rifle. But Quake does that now.
What I'm trying to say is, the military is very upfront about how video games and military are pretty damn similar.
That's OK. You still be firing at the Canadians and the British.
Je ne parle pas francais.
I think you're trolling but I'll respond. A bullet is a bullet is a bullet. In 2011, 40 year old weaponry will be an M-16 / M-60 / AK-47 / AK-74. Last time I check those weapons fire projectiles that will kill a human being. I'm pretty sure the same results will happen 8 years from now too.
The point is not to worry about future opponents, the point is to be modular, to quick deploy and to be tactical - all at the same time. Send soldiers to police a public demonstration in NYC, equip them with body armor, gas mask and non-lethal projecticles. Send soldiers to police Baghdad, same equipment as above but include lethal projecticles, GPS with maps and translation software.
Rangers Lead the Way!
At first the military would teach soldiers to be soldiers, and the gear would be supplementary, but it would most likely end up like every other technological advance. One day our soldiers are almost 100% reliant on the gadgets, at which point we are almost completely vulnerable to some sort of electronic attack that leaves us with a battlefield full of soldiers getting picked off like fish in a barrel because they have lost their technological crutch.
I am wondering if having everyone and everything automated and wirelessly networked is a hot idea. A technologically adept adversary could take advantage of this fact and, say, feed false info into the system, or order an air strike, remote acivation of the automatic tourniquit(sp?) system, what have you. Even if they didn't hack the system a captured unit might be just as good.
The reason that Baghdad isn't a parking lot, like Grozny, is that the US military "spending every now and then billions of $ for developing new army technology." Ask the Chechens which enemy they'd rather have, the Americans, or the Russians. I'll guarantee they'll pick Americans. We spend billions so we don't HAVE to flatten cities to achieve victory. That "helps people" not get killed.
Derek
That gun ain't gonna protect you from what I'm planning with my boxcutter.
There is plenty of logic. Your just too busy being sour cream to see that violence has it's place, and in most cases, there is nothing like a swift kick in the ass to get your point across.
Yeah, violence is soooo cool! Best thing about it: it works both ways, doesn't have to be symmetric, and it always breeds more violence.
If Darwin is right, and we are descendents from other animals, then Violence is the ONLY law we've followed since the dawn of time. Because it works a whole lot better than your alternatives.
You, my friend, are a nutcase. You may think you have thought up something new here, but in fact you have reinvented social darwinism. History proves that social darwinism leads to racism, fascism and nazism; and by your utterances I'm affraid history is going to repeat itself.
In fact, power storage is really what is hampering any major advances into the portable, semi-autonomous electronics. Wireless phones, laptops, robotic flies, cybersoldiers, etc. -- we need some sort of a major breaktrhough in power storage until we can produce actual designs as opposed to mockups that you need to plug into the wall socket.
>|<*:=
I do worry that these new computer-enabled combat suits would fail in a spectacular fashion if methods of generating a strong electromagnetic pulse is factored into the equation.
For example, a bomb with a big capacitor inside surrounded by a jacket of carbon filaments could send a shockwave of EMP that will disable any electronics within a couple of hundred meters of the explosion point. And of course we know what happens when you detonate a nuclear warhead at high altitude; I believe that one Soviet tactic during the initial phases of a nuclear war was to use obselete but still large SS-9 rockets that would detonate their 25 megaton warheads about 200 to 400 kilometers off the ground over enemy territory, which would create such a strong EMP shock it would wipe out everything electrical underneath the explosion point.
Lets not put money into the military and watch as we get run over by warring nations.
Technology must progress, otherwise we would still be using muzzleloader muskets. Anything that keeps our servicemen alive and gives them an even greater edge is a good thing.
My question to you is why is it scary? Wars have been an unfortunate reality for quite some time, and they will not be stopping anytime soon. So a "long series of wars" that will last "until at least 2011" isn't so far fetched. Wouldn't you want your country to have the best trained and best equipped fighting force when it hits the fan?
Cheers!
It's simple, but nobody wants to believe it: War is the health of the state. War is the single most effective way to increase the power and scope of government. History has proven it time and time again. The government which can successfully make a business out of war is the government which enjoys nearly unlimited power over its people.
We need to realize that government is a business. Like any business, government's objective is to serve its own interests: to profit. The main difference between government and private business, which most people don't realize, is that government is the only business that may "legally" initiate force as a business model. This is exactly why government MUST be strictly limited in power -- abuse of power is not just possible, it is inevitable. As the saying goes -- power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The only solution to this problem is to apply strict limits on the scope and power of government (as the founders proposed) -- a solution which directly conflicts with the objectives of those in power.
Speaking for the Marine Corps... Shit breaks. A lot. A common joke in the Corps is if you put a couple marines, naked, in an empty room with three steel balls, one ball will be eaten, another broken, and the third lost. STuff like this... bad news.
Give these systems to Marines at CAX, and give them an order to see how easy it is to break. I guarantee you the failure rate will be astronomical. Don't field it to regular forces until the Marine Corps cannot break it any more regularly than they can the current gear, AND don't field it until the weight is brought down.
The article mentioned lower weight... Quite a bit of a combat load is things like tents, shovels, extra uniforms, socks, another pair of boots, food, water, how does this system propose to deal with that? Especially with the requirement to carry spare batteries. What I read of the article, the equipment this stuff replaces is not any heavier- the gear involved in this is a fraction of a real combat load. IT might be significantly lighter for a heavily armed sentry, but for an infantryman in the field, any gain would be marginal, and not worth the greater potential for failure. The OICW is about twice the weight of an M-16... Even if the overall system weight is less, thats still double the weight on the arms in combat. Anyone who has used the M-16 in rifle PT knows how quickly even a lightweight rifle can become extremely heavy.
Military forces do best when they stick to simple gear that gets the job done. Aviation and naval forces may be able to get away with more complexity by the nature of their jobs, but the basic infantryman doesn't have time to worry about all that crap. Field simple to use, lightweight, and reliable gear and go out and raise hell. Thats how the infantry wins.
Sure, and how about not putting money into police departments and not having crime? Sound real logical, doesn't it?
Perhaps we could put up several large signs that read "Shhhh! Do Not Disturb." along our borders. I'm sure the rest of the world would respect our wishes.
An AC wrote:
You, and all those like you, are wrong. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights enshrine free speech and dissent as the right of every US citizen, and the basis of freedom. Without free speech, there can be no free country. And don't give me this "wartime" idiocy. If dissent during wartime was unAmerican, then sign Abraham Lincoln up as unAmerican. He dissented during a war, from the Senate floor.
You might want to do some reading to brush up on what is and isn't "American". I would suggest the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, president John Quincy Adams' speech to the U.S. House of Representatives on July 4, 1821, and Emma Lazarus' poem "The New Colossus" (Lady Liberty).
I don't know about the other poster, but I will only be happy:
From someone with a better grasp of what America is all about:
John Quincy Adams, July 4, 1821