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Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/19/us_fist_to_iraq_even_though_cancelled/

US 'Land Warrior' wearable-computing headed to Iraq

By Lewis Page
Published Thursday 19th April 2007 13:53 GMT

The US Army's wearable tech programme for soldiers, Land Warrior, is dead in the water.

Despite well over a decade of work and hundreds of millions of dollars in development funding, there remain very significant problems with the kit and it has received poor reviews from soldiers in testing. The equipment was de-listed from the Army budget in February, effectively killing Land Warrior as it stands. Strangely, however, it is about to get its first real trial in Iraq.

Wearable tech for close-combat troops has been in the pipeline for a long time. Land Warrior first got rolling in America as long ago as 1991, and some $500m has now reportedly been spent. The UK's equivalent FIST (Future Integrated Soldier Technology) began in 1994 and has £2bn earmarked for it. FIST is scheduled for deployment by 2015. Various other countries are sniffing around the concept, too.

FIST, Land Warrior, and most of the others are fairly similar. There is a helmet-mounted display, a gun-mounted camera, sat-nav, and digital networking. Integrating these can provide various services that soldiers could find useful. Land Warrior, for instance, can show a tactical map on the flip-down helmet display with all a soldier's squadmates marked on it, Ghost Recon style. This could be very useful in a fast-moving urban firefight; potentially you'll know if your buddy is about to appear in a doorway or round a corner, so you won't mistakenly shoot him.

US army land warrior

Soldiers test the Land Warrior system. The soldier on the right is taking advantage of the system's ability to look around corners.

But, in fact, according to an article (http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4215715.html) in May's Popular Mechanics, the map is slow to update. It generally lags up to a minute behind the real world, not a patch on the one in Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (this could be something to do with the fact that Land Warrior is based on a 400 MHz ARM processor, as opposed to the Xbox 360's triple 3.2-gig cores. But you could never run an Xbox on portable batteries, and anyway the snags probably lie as much in the network and the nav system). Land Warrior mapping could still prevent errors by snipers, artillery, or close air support, but it just won't do for close combat.

Another feature common to Land Warrior and FIST is the gun-cam. US or British soldiers can view heads-up video from their weapon sights, allowing them to poke their M4 carbine or SA80 round a corner or over a wall and see what's going on without sticking their heads out of cover. Potentially, they could even shoot at enemies like this; they have a gunsight pipper on their display.

Again, however, there are problems. To begin with, nobody except Arnold Schwarzenegger can shoot a long gun accurately without the butt tucked into their shoulder (there are rumours that in real life even Arnie can't really hit much one-handed from the hip). Looking round corners is quite useful, but you can do that with a periscope or a mirror on a stick, without even sticking your arm out.

The Land Warrior gunsight-cam also has the ability to zoom up to 12x, which "makes every rifleman a marksman", according to Colonel Richard Hansen, the programme manager. The word "marksman" has a lot of different meanings (it can mean a fairly low-level American shooting qualification, a job within an infantry unit, a more difficult British qualification, etc).

Many would argue that it takes more than a sight to make a marksman; some would also suggest that anything more than 4x magnification for the low-powered ammo used in M4s or SA80s is overkill. British fire-team marksmen using the long-barrelled LSW variant of the SA80 operate very efficiently using 4x optics. In any case, another complaint about the Land Warrior zoom-sight is that it is very slow to focus. Popular Mechanics describes it as "more like a cheap digital camera than an advanced piece of military gear".

So, in fact, for ordinary soldiers, Land Warrior and its ilk boils down to a very heavy, expensive voice radio with relatively crappy battery life.

"It's just a bunch of stuff we don't use, taking the place of useful stuff like guns," one soldier told Popular Mechanics. "It makes you a slower, heavier target."

The current incarnation of Land Warrior weighs 16lb, a very significant addition to an infantryman's combat load. Soldiers have tended to be overburdened with kit for a very long time (Roman legionaries, ordered by Consul Gaius Marius to carry all their own gear, called themselves "Marius' Mules"). This problem is as bad as ever it was, with modern troops staggering under the weight of heavy body armour, ammo, weapons, water – and now an ever-increasing load of batteries and electronics.

That said, unit leaders and commanders are more positive about Land Warrior. They like the ability to see where all their people are in close to real time. They are particularly pleased with the ability to mark a potential target with a gun-mounted rangefinder and instantly transmit its coordinates up the chain of command, perhaps accompanied by a picture or a video clip. This allows a strike by artillery or air support to be approved fast and arrive quickly, saving much wearisome reading out of numbers over voice channels and debate about whether a particular nail really deserves the big hammer or not.

Some believe that the complaints from ordinary grunts about bugs, weight, and so on are just normal military grumbling. A staff-sergeant was quoted by Popular Mechanics as saying "all guys bitch and moan about new gear. They'll get used to it".

While Land Warrior is more or less dead, with funding removed for any further procurement, a fair amount of kit is already bought and cash is there to maintain it. The 4th battalion of the US 9th Infantry, recently ordered to Iraq earlier than planned as part of President Bush's "surge" of troops, will use a limited amount of Land Warrior gear. Popular Mechanics suggests that the 4th of the 9th will use the full rig only for squad-leaders and other commanders, perhaps letting the ordinary grunts get by with just a locator beacon and comms.

The 4/9th were the unit engaged in full field tests and training with Land Warrior last year, and there are suggestions that they have asked to take the gear to Iraq because some of them at least are big fans.

Other sources (http://www.fcw.com/article97586-02-06-07-Web), however, have suggested the only reason they have taken it is that they were given no time to re-train with standard gear after the programme was effectively cancelled and the 4/9th was ordered to the warzone ahead of schedule.

It seems probable that only a truly stellar performance in Iraq can now save Land Warrior. That in turn might easily call the UK's FIST programme into question – and indeed, FIST already looks like shocking value for money (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/05/army_tech_obsolete/) even if it works as advertised. A set of FIST will cost at least £70k (as opposed to Land Warrior at a reported $30k) and seems unlikely to be any better.

The UK, too, could be described as having skewed its infantry funding far too much towards equipment and away from people. Spending £2bn to develop British wearable-tech could be seen as foolish in light of the rising proportion of Blighty's infantrymen who must now be recruited overseas due to low pay and poor conditions. Some UK taxpayers might ask why they should pay extra for British-made kit which may not even be any use, if this means we can't afford British soldiers.

A final nail in the Land Warrior/FIST coffin might also be the total lack of any reported interest from the special-ops community, always the leaders of military fashion. Special-forces units are always looking for any edge they can get in close combat, and to date have achieved almost invincible gunfighting performance mainly by intensive live-fire rehearsals, endless training, and a few relatively simple bits and pieces such as stun grenades, night-vision gear, and specialised sights or illuminators. Given the intensive media spotlight always focused on these units, we'd probably know if the super-troopers were moving into wearable networking in any big way.

All in all, it could be that the day of the digital warrior is still some way off. ®

Lewis Page was a navy diver himself, but suffered a fairly torrid introduction to close-combat tactics at the hands of Royal Marine instructors after rashly volunteering for Commando training during a moment of madness. His frankly brilliant book (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lions-Donkeys-Dinosaurs-Lewis-Page/dp/0099484420/ref=sr_1_2/202-9705542-8989460?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173178740&sr=1-2) on the British military and its troubled relationship with expensive technology is now out in paperback. Even if you don't like it, it's printed on very absorbent paper and has hundreds of uses around the home.

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