I don't know about the British system, however I believe America has shipped ~100 Land Warrior systems for experimental use in Iraq.

 

How's things going with you these days, you must have finished Darmouth and initial sea training by now?

 

h*tp://www.defense-update.com/products/f/fist_sa.htm

Thales continues the evaluation.

Were one to judge all companies similarly, one could only conclude that they are all equally useless.

My understanding is that there was another round of troop trials earlier this year or late last.

 

However, FIST is immensely challenging, extremely difficult to get right and very easy to get wrong.  Finding the right combination of functionality, integration, user interface(s), robustness, light weight and power supply is difficult.  I'd also bet on inconsistent and conflicting results from troop trials.  In my view the only sensible acquisition strategy is to forget target IOC dates and follow an incremental path with as many interations as necessary until troop trials suggest its on the right track and the right technology is available to deploy something useful.  This doesn't preclude limited deployment of individual elements.  Of course the famous British media will leap on this as another example of MoD incompetance, echoed by assorted idiots on other media.

Okay, so what do we really want out of FIST?

 

So far we have:

 

The Personal Role Radio - good kit and huge improvement in section comms!

 

The Laser Light Module for the IWs - anyone used this?

 

The Night Vision Goggles - anyone used these?

 

The Bowman Radio System - I understand they are going through a lot of upgrades and improvements since introduction... thoughts?

 

The PRR and the NVGs are essentially an extension of existing methods (yelling at the top of your lungs, and the CWS)... but what extra capabilities are we wanting to get? I mean I heard that Germany is building in a navigational system on their future soldier technology with an eyepiece I presume, other nations use PDAs I think, but whats the overall goal? Improve existing capabilities (comms and night vision) or new capabilities based on IT? And if we're going for these new capabilities and network-centric stuff, what will it be, how will it work and how will it improve the lot of the average infantryman?

 

The LLM is taken care of, I believe BOWMAN continues to be worked upon - are we realising the data comms part of BOWMAN yet or is it essentially a CLANSMAN voice comms replacement?

 

In a sense it is a question of whether you want an evolutionary system or a revolutionary system. Unfortunately, a lot of these projects are trying desperately to be revolutionary, i.e. claim that their new piece of technology will dramatically change the way a conflict is fought. I say unfortunately because the best approach has always proven to be evolutionary - the necessary 'package' of upgrades for a revolutionary change simply takes too long, and can end up being overtaken by urgently-acquired technology. Just look at UAVs - the US Army had to drastically rethink its Future Combat Systems UAV plan because the technology had simply evolved further than their originally ambitious requirement (look at the ScanEagle in particular, and the Raven as well).

 

The evolutionary approach, on the other hand, simply aims to give the troops whatever bits and pieces will help with a specific problem, e.g. new armour when it becomes available, or a lighter, better GPS unit. This can cause problems, because you can end up with three or four different items, all procured separately, when one or two multi-function units could do the job, and be lighter. However, this sort of problem can be dealt with in other ways, e.g. using modular equipment, that is designed to work together, which is one of the reasons for the digital radio concept (so that different pieces of kit can plug and play together). As for PDAs, these have had a very mixed reaction - the Commanders Digital Assistant (basically an HP IPaq PDA in a nice little rubber housing, and a few thousand dollar price tag...) was felt to be pretty much useless. They lack the screen size and clarity to show much detail, and arguably don't really offer much real capability. A far more useful capability might be to simply give the unit leaders a small laptop or tablet PC (as the Israelis have tried out), and give everyone in the unit something along the lines of a normal modern cellphone. A modern mobile phone type handset (possibly even something along the lines of TETRA, i.e. a secure mobile phone, preferably 3G or similar standard) would allow individual soldiers to send short messages, i.e. texts, including up to close support aircraft. Everyone in the unit would have a handset, and all vehicles would have a comms relay node, helping boost signal strength.

 

As for all the other kit, I would basically try to be as minimalist as possible - nobody will thank you for loading them down with the kitchen sink! Give everyone a good reliable radio (possibly including GPS functionality, as a lot of mobiles do nowadays), good reliable weapon, and good reliable ammunition, LLMs, and that about it. I would, of course, love to see some nice new weapons, but to be honest, that's not likely to happen in the near future... One thing I might be tempted to add though would be a riot shield, preferably like the Plasan Sasa ones, which help protect against rifle fire and fragments. These wouldn't always be useful, but they could come in pretty handy in some of the situations encountered in Basra (I have seen regular police style riot shields, but these will only stop rocks etc...).

Hmmmm everyone should have this comms handset?

 

I wouldnt want to be the WSO of a GR4/pilot of a GR7 and get about 120 texts every time a company gets into contact. Surely hes got enough to worry about and just needs to talk to the commanders on the ground, or a TACP/FOO if they're about...

 

Plus with the modern 'yoof' it could be hard to decipher "pls bmb thse fkers bk 2 t st1 age chrs m8 lol" - hmmm GCHQ could have trouble with that let alone someone whos trying to keep a plane in the sky!

 

 

Considering the multiple operation nature of Thales, I fail to see how one can make such a sweeping statement with any kind of justification.

No. Not OK.

Herald.

Mismanagement etc. seem fundamental to any large corporation, especially those in defence. To automatically assume that the whole is bad based on the dealings with small, separate bits, is daft. It isn't necessarily wrong, but it looks like prejudace. Which it is.

Were one to judge a race or nationality on the same principles...

The real problem is integrating all the various bits and peices on the man and proividing a usable user interaface.  Comms is actually far less of a problem becuae visrutal nets can be created and are in fact essential, but at what level this is managed is an issue.  One of the lessons of Bowman is to revers the tide of history.  IN WW2 it took 30 weeks to train a RA signaller, this decreaesed dranatically with larkspur and again with Calnasman.  The mistake was to think that Bowman was just another easier to use radio.  Oops.

 

I don't undersstnad the attraction of TETRA , I assume very few soldiers have even seen never mind used it (if they are TA with a day job in emergency services).  I actually work with guys who understanad it and strongly oppose it, in their view is is well inferior to APCO.  But of course TETRA is European so must be wonderful - ba!!s.  Trunk radio of any type needs infrastructure and centralised management, I find it hard to see how this is compatible with the tactical end of the battlespace, particularly given the complaints about Bowman and its inflexible callsigns, etc'!  Personally I think TETRA for military use is an underinformed scally wet dream.

Actually, my reference to the use of Tetra was more as an example - it would allow PRRs to have much more range, by not relying on normal radio methods. As for people texting pilots, that is not something that would happen at all, and is frankly absurd. The whole point of the system is to allow the messages to be sent to anyone within your own command structure - e.g. it would allow light infantry in building A to talk to infantry from a neighbouring unit in building B, and the friendly tank crew sitting a few hundred yards away. It does not allow you to just send random messages to anyone you feel like. Now, a forward air controller, on the other hand, would be able to send the proper 'nine line brief' to pilots, probably via a local command post. Troops messing around with the system would get into a world of trouble, as they would for messing around with any other system.

 

The whole idea is to allow a single integrated hand-held unit, combining not just radio functions, but also GPS, and the ability to send and receive important information. Comms relay nodes can be built into deploying units, as has to be done anyway. For short range use, these units would function as normal PRRs, but for longer range use, they would act as secure phones. This is hardly rocket science, and I seriously doubt that it would take much training to get the troops used to this sort of handset.

 

Overall, the whole point is to make the technology as light and compact as possible, so that the load carried by the troops can actually be reduced, despite adding functionality. There are other new technologies, such as the LSAT, which promises to deliver a much lighter ammunition load and weapon, which will reduce the load even further. If you can reduce the load carried by the troops from, say, 50lbs, down to 35lbs, then things would be much easier on the troops. It also offers the opportunity for more ammunition to be carried when needed. Technology is not a panacea, it is just a useful tool, and simply helps the troops do their job, and as such, technology should never become a major part of the soldier's load.

It's easy enough with data, providing you know their callsigns/addresses, and given position reporting and the ability to have a display of everyone in an area that's not a great challenge either.  Digital voice has the potential to operate similarly but there are bandwidth issues and processing capability to deal with the various encryption settings along the way, although setting up a common session encryption is possible.  The problem with the trunk radio systems is that they need management, user groups have to be created.  It appears that Bowman is not entirely dissimilar in this respect.  Conversely the BATES data comms system running over Clansman that was built from the ground up was explicitly required not to rely on any central address management or 'informed' routing nodes (eg DNS and internet type arrangements), routing was built into the address logic.