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Ukraine's Military Wants To Use the HoloLens For Its Tanks (ubergizmo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ubergizmo: Microsoft's HoloLens has so far been positioned as a device for gaming. However it seems that over in the Ukraine, they believe that the technology has use in the military as well, particularly by tank commanders. Given that a tank is more or less fully sealed, it means that looking around isn't quite as easy. Usually this is achieved by mounting cameras on the vehicle with the images projected inside the tank, but with the HoloLens, it will make it easier. Created by Limpid Armor, the HoloLens-enabled helmet will be dubbed the Circular Review System. The video feeds that are gathered from the cameras outside of the tank will then be stitched together and sent to the headset, thus allowing the wearer to see around the vehicle. Not only will this allow them to have a better view, but apparently the helmet will also let the wearer tag enemy and friendly soldiers, and also designate targets and send information back to the commander.
Brings a new meaning to blue screen of death
What on earth makes you think the cameras don't use wires that go into the tank?
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Tanks typically have a "Commander" position to go along with the gunner, driver, loader(s) (for tanks without an autoloader).
By far the best thing about it was it's ability to rapidly construct meshes of the space you're in and track head movements so that holograms displayed in the scene remain stable as you move your head and move around. It seems to me, almost none of those strengths come to play when you're sitting in chair/cockpit of a tank. I wouldn't consider the IMU and transparent OLED screens to be the biggest differentiators of the HoloLens. Also, the viewing angle of the screens sucks balls and is by far the most limiting aspect of the HoloLens experience. Furthermore, the HoloLens is a stand-alone Windows 10 machine which limits the amount of processing power available. Again, if you're seated in a tank then you don't need a cordless experience along with all the handicaps that entails.
Because radio signals can be degraded completely. With UAVs at least they have altitude and clearer lines of sight to repeaters and directional laser systems. A tank rolling through a forest or city streets doesn't have that luxury.
In the news today, Ukraine loses war while tanks apply updates....
You have a point. Russia's Military spending is a tenth of what the US spends currently, and way below that of the Soviet era. So the Russification of neighboring States has been put on hold for a decade or so. But it _will_ continue, as it has since the days of Peter the Great and his expanding Russian Empire.
If you want to understand Russia's moves, you need to consider its point of view: For Russia, NATO is an hostile expanding power at work in eastern Europe.
Of course this only works up to a point. A Challenger 2 during the last Iraq war was hit by 14 RPGs and an anti-tank missile, the most exxtensive damage being to its sighting system. They got it operational again in six hours after recovery.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
The only T-72s Ukraine uses are these that were actually sold to some African country but were never delivered. The ukrainian tank factories only can maintain T-64 and the diesel version of T-80 because it is what they used to manufacture in the soviet times. T-72 is being built in Nizhny Tagil, Russia. This was actually the proof of Russian military helping the separatists - they have used several T-72B3, which Ukraine never had. Ukraine used to have thousands of T-72 in 1991 (older versions) , but because of the aforementioned maintenance issues (they cannot manufacture the T-72 engines and autoloaders) the ones that were still good were sold, a few of them were downgraded with T-64 engines and also mostly sold, and the rest still rusts on their tank graveyards.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap