Slashdot Mirror
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."
But can it play networked Pong?
to the phrase "Blue Screen of Death" doesn't it?
It does sound like a video game.
I wonder if the "network" keeps track of Frags?
How Now Brown Cow
Maybe now we won't be firing at ourselves the majority of the time. ... unmanned drones and vehicles will be?
CE
Sarge: "Dang, that remote works well."
My blog
This seems to be just your average pork barrel gee whiz military contracting.
suddenly I feel very tired
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?
US forces are starting to look like Imperial Storm Troopers? Well, they already aim pretty lousy... That was a start, this is just the finishing touch I guess.
Hate me!
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.
...None of this is going to do much against terrorist attacks.
Then comes a uniform with built-in tourniquets that one day might be tightened and loosened remotely.
Bored Soldier: Base I'm bleeding bad, I need my "arm" tightened.
Base: Our sensors show that isn't your arm.
Why is there no SEP(Somebody Elses Problem)-field included in this nice suit?
ouch - this is really bad for the eyes.. Zaphod
Not exactly true.
5 626a8525628100676e0c/6a60172b3db3d5ce8525627b0062d 928
Maximum effective range:
Area target: 2,624.8 feet (800 meters)
Point target: 1,804.5 feet (550 meters)
Source: http://www.hqmc.usmc.mil/factfile.nsf/7e931335d51
If I was a soldier I wouldn't want to have to packaround an OICW. They are significantly heavier than the M16A2 and the last thing our soldiers need at this point is more weight to pack around.
I've been seeing a _lot_ of articles and "special features" lately about The Weapon and The Soldier of The Future. I can't help but be reminded of the pro-army propaganda in Starship Troopers (the antiwar movie, not the conservative novel). The Future Soldier that CNN is featuring somehow reminds me of a wimped-down version of Heinlein's powered armor suits.
There have been many instances of media covering the weapons of the future (I submitted a story on future robots a couple of weeks ago); what I'm worried about is why that focus is there. Are we getting ready for a long series of wars, ones that we expect to last until at least 2011, when these super-wired Counterstrike uniforms will come into service? That's kind of scary.
(sorry for the blatant US-centrism)
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
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!
The army's supposedly coming out with the OICW in 2004, which has a bunch of new features, including a range of up to 1000 meters (the M16 has a max. range of 400, and thats with really good training)
.223/5.56NATO, there's no way it's going to be good for 1000 meters, as that's a limitation of the cartridge design not the gun. The OICW is also a bullpup design, but still has a short barrel, decreasing maximum effective lethal range. The OICW uses the same magazines as the M16. Even .308/7.62NATO isn't really good to 1000 meters because of it's vulnerability to wind interference.
.50 BMG (BMG = Browning Machine Gun) guns you saw mounted on those armored vehicles in Iraq were a Browning design. And it was Gene Stoner who developed the original AR-10 machine gun, which was redesigned into the M16. Now the US has outlawed the kind of work Browning and Stoner did, and given the excessive excise tax required to become a Class II manufacturer, it's unlikely that you'll ever have that kind of innovation again. Trying to build a machine gun makes you a federal felon with an instant 10 years at Club Fed, and we're talking the pound you in the butt prison, not some country club.
Given that the M16 and the OICW are both chambered in
The OICW is a waste. Give any soldier the choice between a set of combat gear or the scorpion suit, and he'll choose the combat gear. Give him a choice between the OICW or an M16, and he'll choose the M16. Why? Because when your life is on the line complex systems fail more often than simple systems and they can also get in the way. When you're on the battlefield and people are shooting at you, you want to be able to shoot back. When you have to reboot your gun or your combat helmet is on the frits, these are bad things. Moving to the latest new fangled gadgets does not make a successful armed force.
This is why smart guns will be a flop. The Glock firearm design is currently the most popular modern design on the market because it is a simple design that works. It has very few moving parts compared to other semi-auto pistols, and that means it tends to be much more reliable than other designs. When you start introducing computer controls, fingerprint scanners, and the like things get much more complicated much quicker and I personally would hate to lose my life because my smartgun crashed while someone was kicking down my door.
The most venerable machine gun designs were from guys who weren't working for the government. Guys like John Moses Browning who designed the majority of the military machine guns in US history and many still in use today. The
Today's combat weapons are made by large military contractors who move at a snails pace. Browning was turning out multiple designs per year. You'd think with all the backing these big defense contractors have, they could at least keep up.
The last (almost) global empire, the Roman one, did think the same thing. They thought their legions were unbeatable by anyone in the world, so they just didn't care about improving it, and the number of logionaires was at an all time law by the end of the 5th century. They were still the greatest army in the known world, and unbeatable by any other army.
Then in the winter of around 495 the legions of the Rhine and Danube fronteers just saw something strange. Hundreds of thousands of people were camping in the borders of the rivers. But not Soldiers. Not young and strong man. But Old men and women and children...
As soon as the rivers got frozen by the lower winter temperatures, they just crossed it. Thousands of people, unarmed, weak, starving. And the legions could do nothing, even with better equipment and better training and all the money Rome spent with them. There were simply not enough of them to stop thousands of "civilians" to invade the empire.
I guess the US are just not willing to incur in the same mistakes as the romans did.
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.
In a press release... Microsoft Corp announced today its DirectX 12 MilSpec API renamed DirectWarfare including the new
DirectFCS (fire control system) and
ActiveWarhead
seamlessly integrated in the new Microsoft LookOut Below communications software.
Where do you want the bombs to fall today
Having been a Marine for a number of years, I have to call bullshit on this. Unless you are incompetent, *never* cleaned your rifle, or are incapable of grasping the concept of proper lubrication, M16s just work.
In all of the years I qualified on the KD (Known Distance) course, I had only one failure to feed (which can happen to *any* semi-auto firearm), and I never had a 'jam'. Of the others firing the same course with me that did have jams, the overwhelming majority were due to having a 'dry rifle'; ie: no, or improper lubrication. The others did have mechanical failures, but that is to be expected when you consider the age and actual use of those rifles.
To answer to some of the other replies below: M16s are pretty damned accurate as well with the proper load. The Army Marksmanship Unit shoots the M16 now... And they have won some pretty tough matches with those rifles. Even out to 1000 yards. I left the Corps a few years back, but it wouldn't shock me to hear that the USMC Rifle Team switched from the M14 to the M16.
For what its worth, with the exception of boot camp and the first year afterward, I qualified expert every year averaging 230 out of a possible 250 points. (And 286 out of 300 shooting an off the rack M16 on the NRA High Power course during Marine intramural competition.)
In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
Plus, locallized, controlled EMP is becoming more and more doable every day - the use of all this high-tech computer equipment may be vulnerable to that (though I'm sure the computers on these things are shielded out the wazoo, I still worry)
And speaking of computer control - did you notice the mention of autonomous robotic artillery vehicles? Doesn't that bother anyone? Currently, robots function as spy planes, spy jeeps, bomber planes, and now artillery tanks. This is a bad trend. They seem to be giving the robots all the heavy firepower. Whether the catastrophe is SkyNet or some ham radio guy who knows his crypto, this does not seem to be a good trend.
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.
>|<*:=
Lets not put money into the military and watch as we get run over by warring nations.
I must respectfully disagree with my Marine Corps fellow traveller here. As a former U.S. Army officer, I wielded an M-16A1 in the first Persian Gulf War. I found my M-16 was okay during peacetime, but had some doubts about it for wartime, due to my copious research beforehand. When the more senior officers traded in their M1911A1 Colt .45 ACP pistols for M-16A1's, I acquired one of those pistols as an addition to my personal armoury. I wanted the .45 with me on the off chance that I got into a firefight and the M-16 jammed.
The M-16 spokesman here says that it works fine if kept properly lubricated. I NEVER lubricated my M-16 during PGWI because I couldn't. The first (and last) time I did, it became utterly encrusted with sand. There was no escaping the sand in the Arabian deserts as it is a fine powder easily blown into the air or stirred into the air by vehicles and troops moving about. I wiped it down to a "near dry" condition and it was still caked in sand. It was only after a few more days and wipedowns that it finally dried out and quit being covered in sand. From then on, I just wiped it down with a dry cloth every day. Assuming the Marine above is correct, my M-16 was rendered just about useless. Basically, I would have had to begin dousing it in lubricant right when I actually needed it. Hopefully, that would not have been during one of the frequent "shamals" (sandstorms) we endured.
The most egregious design flaw of the M-16 is the reloading arrangement to support semi-automatic fire. A small gas tube taps the barrel near the front sight and carries some of the hot gas from the cartidge's detonation back to a very short tube or "catcher" just above the rotary bolt that houses the firing pin. This means you have crappy, government gunpowder blowing crap right into the most critical part of the weapon. This residue rapidly gums up the area where bullet meets bolt and firing pin. (This area is called the firing chamber.) This problem calls for either frequent lubrication to loosen the deposits or a tolerance for the occasional jam. An old neighbour of mine was fortunate enough to not have his M-16 jam when he found himself three feet from a Viet Cong in the jungles of Viet Nam. In that case, the M-16 beat the Kalashnikov.
Another M-16 design flaw is the weak recoil spring that pushes the bolt back into place to chamber the next round after one is fired. This spring and the earlier-mentioned fouling problem caused the addition of the "forward assist" for the M-16A1. Inevitably, experienced shooters will forget that forward assist at the wrong moment because no other weapon I know of has such a jury-rigged loading process as the M-16. Talk about cruft... The operator's manual for an M-16A1 or the current M-16A2 recommends the forward assist be pushed forward with the heel of the hand following each loading of a fresh magazine's first round. The M-16's predecessors; M-14, M-1 Garand, M1903 Springfield, the Krag- Jorgensen and "Trapdoor Springfields" had no need for such a procedure to be followed in the middle of a firefight.
The Kalashnikov designs use a metal rod to collect the gas from a bullet's detonation to push the bolt back. This small but significant difference from the M-16 means the vast majority of the gunpowder residue never reaches the firing chamber of an AK. This is a huge help in not gumming up a Kalashnikov when it is being used. Another tremendous advantage of the Kalashnikovs on campaign is the small number of parts they have. Having field stripped AK's and M-16's many, many times, an M-16 has about three times as many parts. These parts are typically much smaller and more prone to breakage on the lighter M-16. Some of those parts are not "idiot proofed" either. When it's 3 am and you are running on six hours sleep in the last three nights, the last thing you need is to be sure to put some cotter pin in only from the right as the weapon won't fire if that pin was inserted from the lef
In principio erat Verbum.
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