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.