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Army Plans Overhaul of Infantry Gear
nxg125 writes "Wired is running an article about a seven-year, $250 million revamping of the US Army's uniforms. One of the major obstacles is going to be how to power all the electronic devices that the soldiers will use. 'They have at least one idea, though. "Avoid the use of Microsoft Windows operating systems," a recent memo on the subject directed. FFW is going open source. Cleaner software needs less energy to run.'"
There are very good reasons for the military to avoid using Windows.
Being closed-source, Windows wouldn't be peer-reviewable by the army, nor could the army fix its own problems with the code if they encounter any.
No need for a cheap-shot.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
So why are guerilla tactics used by an opposing force often decried as unfair or underhanded?
Unfair? No, never. Ask anybody in uniform or anybody who's ever served in uniform and they'll tell you that fairness has nothing to do with it. "Overwhelming force" is the watchword.
Some tactics are immoral, though. Like surrounding your troops with civilians acting as human shields, or storing weapons in or basing operations out of hospitals or mosques. Why? Because both of those tactics put civilians in danger. If you make hospitals legitimate military targets, for example, then doctors, nurses, and patients are going to die. That's bad for everybody.
I write in my journal
I would think that the military would get someone (or themselves) to roll a Military version of Linux. Then they could control deployment of the software for various purposes a bit easier. Make sense?
I for one welcome our new [insert main topic] overlords.
Like, quietness - I wouldn't want a loud fan, or any fan for that matter, on my back.
Battery life, reliability stability - wouldn't want any of this going down in a critical moment.
Redundancy/Backup system - wouldn't want to be unable to complete tasks if electronic gear is down.
Liability - I can see gunsight video appearing on the internet (already is for some aircraft videos)
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
anyone who's been in the army knows what I'm talking about.
Your GPS has this big whack battery that only works in it. Your NVG's are the same (well, the 'new' ones will actually takee AA's as well). That big 'ol SINGARS radio, what a beast of a battery. The secure comm unit for it, again another specialised battery.
When I was in the army I always thought our biggest weakness was every single piece of electronic gear took a specialised battery that would only work in that item. Nothing could just use commodity batteries.
I think they are just taking this a step further. You guys whine about windows but, this is REAL vendor lock-in. You get batteries from us or all your shit stops working.
Like surrounding your troops with civilians acting as human shields, or storing weapons in or basing operations out of hospitals or mosques.
Speaking of this, doesn't anybody else find it a bit odd that the so-called "wedding party" that we wiped out last week near the Syrian border just happened to have stockpiles of RPGs, cash, foreign passports, and guns? Are they now using wedding parties to hide themselves?
Also, I'm no expert on Iraqi culture, but having a bunch of kids at a party at 3am seems very unlikely to me. Does anybody get the feeling that the arab press is working with the insurgents to skew public opinion?
Clean software is better than bloated software.
No software is better than clean software.
No matter how clean it may be, it will still potentially have flaws. In the case of "army stuff", I'd tend to think that traditional computing systems would not be suitable or efficent for that matter. Any software which has to 'boot up' is probably bad.
QNX on the other hand, may be good. It's used pretty widely, is lightweight, and supposedly rock solid. But, still, if the task can be accomplished just as efficently without computers at all, it's probably a better idea.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I remember a few years ago, seeing a bunch of high-end wrist watches that charged up through regular motion while wearing the watch. Or you could just flick your wrist a few times to store some extra energy. I think one of them was called "Kinetic" or something clever like that.
I wonder if there's any possibility for motion-charging batteries to succeed as a power source for soldiers. I admit I didn't rtfa, but obviously the overall power requirements would be relevant to the success of something like this.
IANAL but, not only is this immoral it is also illegal. There are a long series of Geneva conventions that most countries have signed and ratified. In the United States when international law is ratified it holds the same legal standing as the Constitution. This kind of stuff is very illegal in domestic as well as international law. There are some of the newer Geneva conventions that the U.S. has not signed or ratified though. I don't think that they are signatories to the prohibitions on torture, but this is still covered in treaties as far back as the 1907 or 1949 (?) Geneva conventions. This is a big issue right now with the treatment of prisoners of war in Iraq. This body of law is called Ius ad bellum (rules in war).
I'm disappointed I saw no mention of the liquid body armor Army scientists are working on. Basically you take Kevlar, which is already pretty protective, and soak certain chemicals into it. Then when you get shot or stabbed, etc, the liquid hardens instantly and the wearer remains unharmed. I guess it's a possible future improvement, but perhaps the more conventional body armor is more reliable and tested for now. Less fun to talk about :/
Maybe they should fork over that money to the *current situation* and give the troops some bullet-proof vests NOW!
I ask that question all the time. Why not bulletproof vests? I hear all the arguments of "too much money" "foot soldiers are disposable" to "they're not really bulletproof" and all sorts of other crap. Sure they don't help in all situations (my buddy's helicopter crashed while avoiding ground fire), but i would think that it'd make more sense on every level. Especially the financial one.
Oh well. I'm just a stupie-ayse liberal.
do() || do_not();
What ever happened to don't, ask don't tell?
Ok, enough playing with ppl's names.
Man he's got a cool job. GI-Joe mixed with geeky technology. Sounds like an awesome gig. Wonder how he got into that? I'm sure there are many others who agree that's everything awesome in the world merged into 1 job. Would be neat get a
It's not going to run Windows because there's probably not going to be a machine that's capable of running Windows (or Linux, for that matter)
It will likely be a low-power, sleep-capable PIC that doesn't have an OS. To run some bloatware (any operating system is bloatware on a low-power system) would be absolutely ridiculous. The software will be custom-written for the suits and work on the machine level.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Do they still teach hand-to-hand combat in the military? Not just to special forces, but to the standard infantry?
Inquiring minds want to know.
If you honestly think that the US forces go around responding to fire willy nilly without thinking of the political consequences you are severely out of touch with reality.
--Kevin
I was in the army for 3 years as a medical laboratory specialist (92B-10) and went to my advanced training school in San Antonio, TX at the lovely Ft. Sam Houston.
I spent several months learning to manually perform all sorts of medical lab work only to arrive at my permanent duty station and be told to forget it all because I'd never need it. Everything in the hospital lab was fully automated with the exception of white blood cell differentials and those were only performed if the machine wasn't sure it had the right answer.
However, if the power had gone out (which it did my very first night working alone on night-shift) I was prepared. Thankfully when it went out it was August and over 100 degrees and that was too warm to perform the tests I knew how to do (as temperature affects reaction rates) and so my very first night being on my own I had to call the hospital commander in the middle of the night and let him know that until the power came back on we (the lab) would be unable to perform any lab work and that we wouldn't be opening the blood bank fridges for anything short of a life or death emergency.
They had to reroute all incoming emergencies to Walter Reed and other area hospitals until about 5:00 am.*
I know a lot of people make fun of the military, but everyone I knew while I was in was well trained and could cope when the expensive equipment wouldn't work.
* Yes, our hospital had emergency backup power.
No, the air conditioning was not on emergency backup power in the wing where the lab was (formerly the psych ward) and so even though the instruments stayed on, the temperature quickly rose to the point where every single instrument started beeping and quickly went out of calibration.
No, the blood bank fridges did not have backup power to keep them cool.
No, I don't know what genius civilian contractor came up with that plan.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Reminds me of the (US) Revolutionary War, where the Brits were extremely put off that the American irregulars didn't follow accepted military rules of shooting from closed-line fixed formations. Worse, even, was the American penchant for setting ambushes, shooting from behind trees, hedgerows, and fences, and aiming specifically at British officers (ie. sniping). All of these actions were loudly decried at the time, and not just by the Brits.
But, what American patriot contemporary to the minutemen would blame them for using such tactics when defending home and country against a better prepared, better equipped, better commanded, numerically superior enemy? To fight in this manner was the only rational thing to do, but the values of the Americans. To fight otherwise, and accept the rules of military conduct of the Europeans would have been folly and suicide.
It was "asymetrical warfare" at it's best, and it definitely contributed to the desired (by our American POV) outcome.
---anactofgod---
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
There's a great quote from the Vietnam Era. Wish I could find out who said it. "You cannot defeat an enemy who is willing to fight a Huey with a bow and arrow".
+40c heat in desert, -40c frost in finland,
deep mud, pouring rain, dust, dirt...
Environment puts the hardware to strain and wearing extra weight while taking cover from enemy fire, or just on transfer march to somewhere doesn't sound very tempting to me..
Sure it would be nice to have gps locator and map which would give you exact location all the time, but once you run out of duracells, you're lost in the woods. Compass+paper map weights much less than gps+some cpu device with map display and endures diving to dirt better.
Uniforms shouldn't really contain any electronics at all. They are one of the most strained items in the army, crawling in ground gets them dirty and they need to be washed every now and then. Having to remove and reattach bunch of electronics to them before and after laundry would add much work to equipment maintenance.
The page 2 in the article refers transferring some of the carried weight to robotic mule. I don't think it's very convinient to drag some robot around in battlefield since the terrain adapts from plains to steep cliffs and water areas to cross.
The robots would also add another step in logistics.. more stuff to drag to battlefield and back.
Modern warfare is very fast advancing on battlefield, and sadly most of the infantry tactics still are based on stationary warfare.
Mounting night goggles to helmet doesn't really help that much nor does radio headsets.. simply too fragile in real combat.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
"Shock and awe" was aimed entirely at Saddam's military system. You are wrong about that one.
"And torturing innocent civilians is perfectly acceptable as long as its an outlet for frustration or they might have useful information."
You are only slightly correct on this one. The idea that it is acceptible is not US policy, but is instead something being used by Rush Limbaugh to justify everything.
Actually, I work for this company, and most of the embedded systems are proprietary. For the simple reason that we have to design system-level components from scratch. But the Mule and other Autonomous Navagation System projects actually use Linux as the main system. The sensors collect data, and software written for the Linux box that will be on the vehicles actually model the world around them in 3D and then make decisions on where to go based on that model. So it is based on Open sourced systems, but not every line of code will be released for public use via GPL ;)
It's as if the senior military decision makers don't really understand how the military is really just another tool of diplomacy, and should be used in concert, planning and execution of all other diplomatic means.
I understand that British generals think this way (and, based on much reading, that most European generals think much the same)- that war is just part of the diplomatic process. American generals are trained on the assumption that the diplomacy is done by the State Department, and that the military is only called in when it's time to bust heads. So they concentrate on being good at busting heads, and let the striped-trouser types concentrate on the diplomacy parts.
In other words, its a difference of opinion about the role of a general. A fairly common difference of opinion, at least between Americans and Europeans.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
And the sky is blue, and the fifer and the drummer are playing a little ditty, and the flag is waving we go marching happily off to war.
We (Americans) were all taught in school that the Nazis were protecting Hitler, not the German people. And the Republican Guard was protecting Saddam, not the Iraqi people, etc.Now clearly the U.S.M.C. is not protecting GWB, so they must be protecting the people, right?
Don't laugh, it's true! I watch my 401(k) go up and down daily based on how well they're protecting my interests.That's not funny. That's sad.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
If you honestly think that a patrol in a foreign city being ambushed from a building pauses to determine whether that building is a hospital, building of religious significance or home of orphans, in order to weigh the political consequences of various courses of actions, before opening fire, then you are severely straining your own grasp of reality.
More to the point, I wasn't speaking of the US forces on the ground, in harms way, as it were. I intended to speak to the senior most military and governmental (sorry, left that out in my previous post) officials decision to actually go to war. I am suggesting that those decision makers continue to severely discount how overwhelmingly important national and international public opinion is in rendering a positive outcome to a military action.
If we (the US) fails in Iraq, it won't be because of the US military. It'll solely be the fault of the elected civilian leadership, who stacked the deck against a positive outcome occurring in so many ways, it's going to be the case study of how NOT to go to war for generations to come.
---anactofgod---
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
The company I work for, Foster-Miller, actually develops multi-functional clothing for the military for just this sort of application. This page gives a very brief example of including antennas in "electro-textiles". We also produce a number of other really cool integrated electronic capabilities for armor and clothing, but my NDA prevents me from listing them here. I can tell you though that clothing specifically designed to meet the future electronic device needs of the military is being developed and is well beyond the prototype stage.
I think that's from Brando's character in )_Apocalypse Now_ - which by no means reduces the relevance or the insightfulness.
The so-called "soldiers" involved in the Iraq prison scandal violated orders (or obeyed illegal orders) and ignored their training. As for the prisoners at Gitmo: most fall into a gray area not covered by the Conventions (the last modifications to which took place in the late 40s, decades before an pan-national entity like Al Qaeda was considered seriously).
Go check out the Third Geneva Convention. The Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan did not meet all of the conditions in 4A(2) (most did not wear identifiable uniforms or markings, nor did they conduct themselves accordingly with the laws of war), nor did they qualify as a "regular armed force" (a requirement specified in 4A(3)) nor did they "spontaneously take up arms" as defined in 4A(6).
The U.S. officially calls these guys a few things (such as "detainees") rather than "prisoners of war" -- and rightly so. They are little more than a step up from street gangs operating on a larger piece of turf. They have very little resemblance to professional armed forces when it comes to training, discipline or organization. They are thugs, murderers and criminals.
So please, if you're going to wave your angry anti-American flag, do so after you've been better informed.
It was some years ago though. Before any attack on Afghanistan. They showed how the military does a drop. Where they dump soldiers, cannons, humvees, etc... out of a plane. They actually pack hard cardboard under the humvees and stuff, so that when they hit the ground. The springs on the humvee collapse, and crush the cardboard, thus preventing damage to the truck.
What was suprising was that the guys working the artillery pulled out paper and a calculator and started to do trajectories by hand. It seemed that the military was worried about electronics falling out of a plane.
It makes sense, but then again, I don't see how a person would survive, and a hand held computer wouldn't.
Then again, this was probably more then a few years ago, that I saw this.
-asoap
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
Go back to the WWII Uniforms. The were much more classy. Indead of spending 250 million on this stuff - spend that money on training our men how to FIGHT. We have become way too technical and soft, and it's costing us. The Army should train like the Marines - Every Man is a Rifleman FIRST AND FOREMOST. They ALL know how to fight - even the Clerks. The Army only trains the Infantry to fight. Everything else is just support of that. That's not quite right... I have a lot of criticisms of the Military because I was in it. 8 years US Army Infantry, Light Fighter. While I was in, we transitioned from the Steel Pot to the K-Pot (helmets). The old Steel pot was better in my opinion. Better jackets too. This new stuff might be high speed, but it lacks character. What were we talking about?
MadOgre.com
Depends on which branch.
It also depends on which field.
I was in the Corps, and as of 93, every recruit who went through bootcamp was required to spend one month at Marine Combat Training (MCT) with yearly refresher courses. Of course, you also need to remember the fact that every Marine is a rifleman first and foremost, no matter what their job.
Sent from your iPad.
i hate it when people talk about the infantry. it's like some mystical world full of video game and movie references and abstract concepts that seem totally logical to someone who hasn't done it. it's a culture shock and a different, very real, very harsh world. it's really agonizing to hear it discussed but that being said:
being in the infantry you get used to everything just being heavy and ungangly. it would be a shock to most slashdotters just how cumbersome our gear is. fighting at night with NVG's on is NOTHING like in a video game. half the time you can't see a thing because it focuses like any other optic. you have to adjust the focus everytime you look at something more than a few feet closer or further than what you were last looking at. and don't get me started on the skull crushers and rhino mounts. i've never been able to get a PVS 14 to sit properly over my eye. shooting in the prone position is even worse.
here's something funny to illustrate. in the army we have this thing called a PLGR (Portable Lightweight GPS Reciever) or "plugger". i assure you that there is nothing portable, lightweight, or GPS about it. it's huge, like the biggest text book you've ever seen. the batteries don't last for shit, it has only an alphanumeric display (no arrows and maps), it weights a good few pounds, it is TERRIBLE at getting a GPS signal. you practically have to climb a tree or be in the middle of open desert to use it.
which leads me to this: most of us use civialian and so called "special ops" (usually just civilian things that have been ruggedized) gear. we use alot of civialian GPRS/FRS radios (though ours can be encrypted), we use lots of civilian GPS too. pretty much anything special forces uses too gets trickled down into infantry use because our gear sucks and they've got the common sense and freedom to use what works.
now to counter that we do have alot of things that really give us a leap over the enemy. we have infared targeting lasers we use at night which really help in a fire fight. other cool things i dont' want to talk about. but of course the bad guys have night vision too. yea, they do. it's not really that expensive these days. good thing most of them are poor shots.
being a terrorist has it's advantages. you can really be effective in small groups. but our tactics work great too and we are constantly adapting. what they gain in autonomy is thwarted by lack of C2 (command and control), training, and good support channels. besides, we can move and act autonomously too.
If you honestly think that a patrol in a foreign city being ambushed from a building pauses to determine whether that building is a hospital, building of religious significance or home of orphans, in order to weigh the political consequences of various courses of actions, before opening fire, then you are severely straining your own grasp of reality.
I certainly do. If you have contradictory information, please share it. What unit did you serve in?
I am suggesting that those decision makers continue to severely discount how overwhelmingly important national and international public opinion is in rendering a positive outcome to a military action.
You have that backwards. Success in fighting this war is necessary for the continued existence of public opinion.
Am I the only one who remembers that we're in a war here? That we're in a clash of civilizations? That the terrorists will not stop until the Ummah (the community of all Muslims) is united under a world government ruled by Shari'a?
Don't believe me? Go read Osama bin Laden's declaration of war.
I write in my journal
One interesting thing to note is from the time of the Roman Legionnaires to today the combat load of a soldier has been around 45 pounds. Compared to the WW II infantryman, the uniform, weapon, ammunition and load bearing gear of today's infantry is lighter, but now they carry night vision goggles, radios and other electronics and body armor. Making it lighter is offset by carrying more stuff.
Speaking of this, doesn't anybody else find it a bit odd that the so-called "wedding party" that we wiped out last week near the Syrian border just happened to have stockpiles of RPGs, cash, foreign passports, and guns?
In the States, perhaps so, but in some countries i've lived in, not at all (though i've never lived in the Middle East). The rest of the world isn't quite as safe as the U.S., nor has the rest of the world enjoyed such homeland peace for so long (an attack (which only directly affect very small localities) every decade notwithstanding)
Also, I'm no expert on Iraqi culture, but having a bunch of kids at a party at 3am seems very unlikely to me.
In plenty of places this is quite common.
Does anybody get the feeling that the arab press is working with the insurgents to skew public opinion?
Of course they are, that's their duty, just as most of the U.S. media outlets skew public opinion for their own agenda as well. Unbiased reports are quite difficult.
As far as I've ever heard, there really weren't any military targets in Dresden. The bombing there was to obliterate the city and demoralize the German people, just as Hitler tried to do the same with London. I think there is validity for most people in the Geneva Convention, but if anyone is going to talk about "morality" in war, you might as well completely skip WWII because everyone pretty much blatantly ignored all the "rules".
People tend to get on their high horse when talking about what's right and wrong in war (especially when they've never been in one) and tend to gloss over the fact that this is people fighting for their lives here. According to the Geneva convention you're not supposed to use a 50-caliber machine gun on personell. Yeah, if I have no guns and there's a 50cal beside me I'm sure as hell going to shoot back. In the end if you want to avoid atrocities in war, then don't get in one in the first place.
As section chief of the FDC, I relied on paper chart and paper calulations, although we had specially modified HP's to do the same thing. (A whole 'nother story, but we didn't use the Army's method of data entry either. I taught my people about 'peeks and pokes', and cut down our data entry time by about 75%)
What freaked out our observer from the 505thArty/101airborne, though, was computing a second mission in my head.
The colonel called, ("27 this is 6. That letter "A" is way too small to see well.") Since it was already pretty durn big, I assumed that he wanted the "A" twice as big, so I closed my eyes, computed 5 (one gun could maintain its firing data) sets of deltas for the other guns.
The observer said later (to my Captain and the Colonel) that never in his life had he seen anyone do 3-d trig in their head. It was checked on paper, and my data was 0/0 correct ("Check, 0!)" on all 15 data points (deflection, elevation and tof
Yes I can also do long division in my head!
[B^)
I'm armed and I haven't changed my patch, so don't start with me -- you *know* how I get!
FIRE.EXE stands for Force Interactive Retasking Environment, and is real software used by the army today.
http://www.eadsim.com/EADSIMMachines.html
Please.
While I don't agree that our government is entirely innocent (Rumsfeld apparently knew about the sanction given our intelligence forces carte blanche in anti-terrorist interrogations, and then (arguably) lied about it) the parent post is still spot on with respect to many of the arguments above it in this thread.
I agree completely with the opinion that terrorists - and insurgents in Iraq who don't follow the GC themselves - have no rights under the GC.
Leaving Iraq aside for a moment, let's consider this: EVERY CIVILIZED COUNTRY in the WORLD is "at war" with terrorism. Terrorists - those who would kill, en masse, unarmed and innocent civilians to make a POLITICAL POINT - are as the above AC pointed out, murderers and criminals.
Perhaps they should have trials. Ok, they should at least have an independent body or bodies consider the evidence against them. Unfortunately the WC is so busy examining it's own navel that it's unlikely anything would come of it.
To slow down terrorism, we have to punish those who commit *immediately* - because it's the only deterrent that the civilized world has against this particular kind of scum. Unfortunately some innocents will fall, even with that process, NO MATTER WHO IS DOING THE JUDGING, be it the US, the coalition, or the World Court.
\end rant
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
I would guess that the wedding celebrations get bombed because the idiots shoot guns in the air during these celebrations. What kind of moron goes around shooting guns when a foreign nation has invaded and occupied your country, and constantly has planes flying overhead. For that matter, what kind of moron celebrates a wedding by shooting guns? Don't they know that these bullets come down with the same velocity as they went up, and frequently kill people when they do? As far as I'm concerned, anyone getting killed because they were pointlessly shooting guns in the air should get the Darwin Award.
They have strange wedding celebrations that consist of only men of fighting age, nobody with identification, no banquets, communications gear, and 300 sets of bedding.
Honestly, just get one guy to say that the US invaded a hospital to grind up babies for breakfast and the media will report it.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
This is all well and good but only applies if the structures are NOT being used as military staging areas. If you turn a hospital into a military base and launch attacks from it, it is no longer a civilian target and it not protected under the Geneva Convention. Ther Germans found this out in WWII. They took over a monestary, which was protected under the Geneva Convention, and used it to launch attacks (it was a very strong structure). Well the allies were having none of that, it was now a military target and they reduced it to rubble.
I assume you are referring to the case of the monastery on Monte Cassini. I've read an explanation for this, which may or may not be true, but in either case adds some insight.
According to this explanation, the attacking allies intercepted a communication between Germans, saying "Abt ist im Kloster". They interpreted that as "the company is in the monastery" (Abt being understood as an abbreviation for "Abteilung" = "detachment".) What was meant, however was "the abbot is in the monastery".
Assuming this is true, bad intelligence led to the attack and destruction of a civilian, protected target. The same situation has occured many times in Iraq, especially while trying to kill Saddam with cruise missiles.
The question it leads to is this: Is the risk of attacking a protected civilian target acceptable, when your intelligence is not 100% sure of whether that civilian target is actually abused by the enemy?
The way I understand the Geneva Conventions, I'd say the answer is no; if you can minimize collateral damage by chosing the appropriate means to attack, you are obliged to do so. In the case of trying to get at Saddam, I suppose an attack using special forces would have been preferable to an attack with cruise missiles.
-Lasse