THE next-generation combat soldier will be able to see more clearly, not just in the dark but also behind a hill.

Transformed, the modern infantry trooper and his fighting unit will connect with the rest of a high-tech system.

He will have more firepower at his disposal and, if he needs it, will even be able to call in an air strike involving precision-guided weapons.

It's not just the infantry trooper and his fighting unit that will evolve as the military is transformed into the Third Generation (3G) Singapore Armed Forces, said Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean, describing the major mid-life overhaul that the SAF is undergoing.

'The important thing is not just what the soldier or his team can do, but how he and his team connect with the rest of the system.'

He will get direct access to information from high-tech sensors, like unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, which relay real-time images while hovering over the battlefield, explained Rear-Admiral (NS) Teo.

The changes will go far beyond the individual soldier and his unit.

The army will have to look at how it organises itself to see if troops, weapons and sensor systems, for example, need to be re-allocated to make the most efficient use of resources, he added.

The 3G SAF, a phrase which Rear-Adm Teo first described in detail in his speech in Parliament during the Budget Debate this year, is set to soon become as commonplace in military lingo here as BMT or basic military training.

At the heart of this SAF is the use of defence technology to 'ensure that the armed forces will be able to meet any future challenge and, in fact, stay one step ahead of it'.

One of the most visible symbols of the transformation, in the form of two sleek swing-wing Eurofighter Typhoons, may be spotted over Singapore skies shortly.

The aircraft are making the 13,000km journey here from Britain, with four stopovers en route, to be put through their paces in the final stages of evaluations for a new fighter aircraft to replace the ageing A4 Super Skyhawks.

The Typhoon is up against Boeing's F-15 Strike Eagle and France's Dassault Rafale in the $2 billion deal for 20 new aircraft. A decision is expected early next year.

Rear-Adm Teo said that other major programmes are on track as well, with Apache helicopters, Primus artillery guns and the navy's submarines brought into service.

The first of the navy's six new frigates with radar-deflecting features was launched in France in January. The second ship, built locally, will be launched on Saturday.

The other four are in various stages of construction, which are on schedule.

Hardware aside, new units have also been set up to meet more complex threats posed by chemical and biological agents, as well as 'dirty bombs' which combine the explosive power of conventional bombs with the threat of radiation.

Some of the new capabilities, however, are far less visible but no less important in giving the SAF an edge.

Using jargon more commonly associated with the back-room operations of commercial organisations, Rear-Adm Teo said that new capabilities in 'networking, communications, command and control systems' have been added as well.

What they do is allow for speedy and accurate information to be collected, relayed and analysed, but to show someone this would basically mean displaying a computer.

He added: 'It's not as exciting as taking out a helicopter, a tank or a gun, but these are real capabilities nevertheless.'

Making much of this possible is another not-so-visible secret weapon in the Defence Ministry's arsenal - its pool of several thousand defence scientists.

They work on key areas like building better sensors and precision weapons as well as how best to combine these capabilities to give the troops an edge, said the minister.

Mindef is also working with the Home Affairs Ministry to use technology to deal with some of the emerging threats, he said.

For example, the data from night vision and intrusion detection systems protecting key installations can be relayed to a command centre, where computers can analyse and compare it against previous intrusions to determine if it is a false alarm or a real threat.

To fund some of this research and development, an additional 1 per cent of Mindef's budget, or an extra $86 million, has been set aside this year.

This is on top of the regular 4 to 5 per cent it budgets annually for research and development, which this time can amount to about $430 million.

Said the minister: 'We are reaping the returns of these investments and some of these systems are maturing, and I expect that over the next five to 10 years, we will be seeing more of this transformation.'

Welcome aboard singa -- trick SAR that trooper is carrying ;)

we are surrounded by potential enemies and being a very tiny country we emphasize the latest technology for our military this is to counter the numericall advantage of indonesia and malaysia

so if worse comes to worse we can defend our island against the worst of attacks

dont worry singa, no one will attack your country its very small what will they get from you you have no oil :D

fine by me but its better for us to be prepared always :bounce:

those who wants peace prepares for war... hold on to your guns singa :rifle: :beer:

Singapore might be small but any invader will surely feel more than just a sting from its well-equipped armed forces.

Well Singapore does occupy a strategic location at the entrance of the Straits of Malacca so occupying it does have some military value in that it is possible to choke off oil shipments coming from the Middle East to China and Japan.

http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,1463...=soldiertech.nl

FIST - FUTURE INFANTRY SOLDIER TECHNOLOGY, UNITED KINGDOM

The Future Infantry Soldier Technology (FIST) programme is being managed by the Dismounted Close Combat Integrated Project Team at the UK Ministry of Defence Procurement Agency at Abbey Wood, Bristol. Thales UK was selected in March 2003 for the Assessment Phase of the FIST program. The two and a half year assessment phase will investigate the options in technology, methods, and processes.

The first major experimental trial for the FIST project under the assessment phase took place in January 2005 at the Army's Salisbury Plain Training Area. 70 soldiers took part and each soldier was equipped with experimental systems including "off-the-shelf" radios, computers, GPS, weapon sights and cameras. Effectiveness was compared with soldiers equipped with conventional infantry systems. Trials data will be used to inform design decisions for the development of the FIST V2 system which will be the subject of a major trial in late 2005.

35,000 sets of kit are expected to be procured and the systems will be deployed by the British Army, the Royal Air Force Regiment and Royal Marines. FIST will enter service between 2015 and 2020.

The FIST programme is in early and in many areas speculative development and the scope of the design, in concept, performance and content continues to evolve.

The FIST programme covers the development of all areas of technology for the dismounted infantry soldier and emphasises the integration of systems. The FIST system will provide the soldier with improved situational awareness, lethality and survivability. The systems will be assessed on a measure of improved capability and on soldier friendliness with ease and comfort of operation.

The five main areas of capability are identified as C4I (command, control, communications, computers and intelligence), lethality (weapons and sights), mobility (navigation, size and weight of equipment), survivability (clothing, stealth, body armour) and sustainability (logistical considerations).

It is not envisaged that each infantry soldier will be issued with a FIST system. The unit commander will specify the FIST systems tailored to the operational and mission requirements.

AWARENESS

A main strategy of the FIST programme is that the infantry soldier is a key element of the UK's network enabled military force.

The FIST soldier's communications system provides communication up to company level. Above company level, communication is via the Bowman integrated combat radio system. The soldier will have a small encrypted radio that operates over a line-of-sight, short range to other members of his unit. The patrol leader's radio will communicate with the forward operating base. The network system will reroute automatically to allow continuity of operation when a communications link is broken, for example when a soldier moves over a hill or ridge.

Voice and data communications can be relayed to the soldier directly or via drone relay links from headquarters, which have downloaded battlefield commands, information and images from forward observers, unmanned air vehicles, remote sensors and other airborne or satellite surveillance assets. The UK's Watchkeeper unmanned air vehicle system is scheduled for deployment in the 2006 to 2036 timeframe.

The soldier will have a global positioning system, a dead reckoner and map displays to increase his situational awareness. The use of helmet displays, wrist mounted displays, hand held and laptop computers and communications systems will be considered.

LETHALITY

The enhanced FIST lethality capability is mainly through improved sighting and weapons. The use of non-cooled observation and sighting systems saves weight and logistic requirements.

The infantry is currently equipped with the 5.56mm SA80 assault rifle. The SA80 will be fitted with an enhanced sighting system on the weapon or linked to the soldier's helmet mounted sight. A linked sighting system allows the soldier to fire round corners at the target while remaining in a protected position.

Other weapons available to the soldier include MBT LAW and Javelin anti-tank missiles and high explosive fragmentation grenade (HEFG) launchers. To engage targets hidden in trenches or behind shelters, the soldier can measure the range of the target with a laser rangefinder. The range data is downloaded to the weapon's round and the overflying weapon round detonates at the designated range to strike the hidden target.

CLOTHING

The clothing will reduce the soldier's visual, radar and infrared signatures as well as providing personal temperature control and environmental protection. The clothing might have built in wires or a type of wireless technology such as Bluetooth to interconnect the FIST components.

The grades of body armour protection will be selected for different operational requirements.

An integrated helmet will provide ballistic protection and an interface to other elements of the battlefield network. The helmet-mounted display can show the battlefield situation, with wearer's position, positions of friendly and hostile troops and equipment and prioritised targets, as well as the downloaded imagery from his weapon sight.

NBC PROTECTION

The infantry soldier will receive warning of a nuclear, biological chemical warfare (NBC) hazard via the Battlefield Information System Applications (BISA). BISA, under development by SciSys, operates on the Bowman communications system and is linked to the Royal Air Force Command Control and Information System (CCIS), the Royal Navy Command Support System (CSS) and the Joint Operational Command (JOCS) structure. New lightweight and breathable materials are developed for NBC protection.

POWER SUPPLIES

Future infantryman power requirements are estimated at an order of magnitude higher, i.e. ten times higher, than currently used. Designs will continue to be based on advanced lithium ion battery technology until emerging technologies such as fuel cells and fuel cell chargers become more mature. QinetiQ, at Farnborough, is investigating FIST power supplies, including fuel cell configurations and the application of QinetiQ's ammonium borate hydrogen generator.

The UK MOD is funding the development of a handheld fuel cell for recharging conventional batteries by an industrial team including Black and Decker, Ineos Chlor, Intelligent Energy, and QinetiQ. In early 2004, the UK MOD announced a bilateral information exchange agreement with USA, covering development of power sources, power management, fuel cells and batteries.


The FIST programme covers the development of all areas of technology for the dismounted infantry soldier and emphasises the integration of the systems.
The FIST programme will develop new clothing for the soldier, including body armour and helmet and helmet-mounted display with interface to other elements of the battlefield network.


The five main areas of FIST capability are C4I (command, control, communications, computers and intelligence), lethality (weapons and sights), mobility (navigation, size and weight of equipment), survivability (clothing, stealth, body armour) and sustainability (logistics).


Under FIST, the infantryman's SA80 assault rifle will be fitted with an enhanced sighting system on the weapon or linked to the soldier's helmet mounted sight.


Thales UK was selected in March 2003 for the Assessment Phase of the FIST programme, to investigate options in technology, methods, and processes.


Infantry weapons will include MBT LAW, which was selected in May 2002 as the UK Army Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapon (NLAW).

IDZ (INFANTERIST DER ZUKUNFT) - INFANTRYMAN OF THE FUTURE, GERMANY

EADS Defence Electronics is leading the Projekthaus System Soldat (PSS) industrial consortium, working with the Bundeswehr to define the Infanterist der Zukunft (IdZ) Infantryman of the Future system. The individual infantryman is equipped with a bulletproof vest, nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) protection, night vision equipment, digital navigation and communication, tactical speech and data communication and a new range of weapons.

The German Army carried out a five month trial of the Einsatzbedingter Sofort Bedarf (ESB) prototype IdZ systems together with additional squad weapons and sighting systems at Prizren in Kosovo during 2002. Two prototype IdZ Squad systems, together with additional squad weapons and sighting systems were used in the trials.

Germany's Federal Office of Defence Technology and Procurement (BWB) awarded EADS Defence Electronics a contract for the supply of 15 IdZ sets (ESB Lot 3 sets), each for ten soldiers. The contract was awarded to meet the urgent operational requirement for deployment by troops serving in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The first system was handed over to the Army Inspectorate at Hammelburg Infantry School on 1 July 2004.

In December 2004, the German BWB placed an order for 196 systems, which will be the first full production IdZ V1 model, for delivery between 2005 and 2007. The systems will enter service with the Bundeswehr Spezielle Operationen (Bundeswehr Special Operations). Delivery of the first 30 systems is scheduled for mid-2005.

IDZ SYSTEM

The system includes ten kits which can be configured for the tasks of the different soldiers. In general, a kit comprises: H&K G36 assault rifle, weapon mounted laser system, command, control, communications, computers and information system (C4I) integrated in the load-carrying vest, eye and ear protection subsystem, NBC protection subsystem, ballistic and stab protection subsystem and night vision subsystem.

The systems included two sets of ten kits for each squad commander plus nine squad members. Each kit comprises a Heckler & Koch G36 5.56mm rifle, a NavICom, Communications Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Information (C4I) system developed by Thales, a Thales Angenieux Lucie image intensifying helmet-mounted night vision goggles, an Oerlikon Contraves weapon mounted laser system together with eye protection glasses, a ballistic and stab protection vest and a load-carrying vest.

The NavICom C4I system provides the soldier with secure communications and continuously updated situation awareness. The digital moving map display system shows the soldier's own position, the position of his comrades, the position of minefields and other danger zones, target and target course, target co-ordinates and the enemy situation. The current situation data is received from higher levels of command. Digital voice and data radio communications instantly provide the soldier with commands and reconnaissance data. The soldier has access to miniature unmanned air vehicles or micro-UAVs and all-terrain unmanned vehicles for safe reconnaissance, for example in urban environments and trenches. The navigation system is equipped with a global positioning system.

The additional squad weapons are the Dynamit Nobel Panzerfaust 3 anti-tank rocket launcher with Dynarange computing sight, Heckler & Koch rifle mounted AG36 40mm grenade launcher, Heckler & Koch 5.56mm MG4 light machine gun and Heckler & Koch MP7 personal defence weapon. Additional sights include the Victronix Vector IV target acquisition and laser range finding binoculars, Zeiss handheld thermal sights, and the Zeiss AN/PAS-13(V) lightweight thermal camera weapon sight.

HECKLER & KOCH G36 RIFLE
Heckler & Koch, based in Oberndorf, Germany, started development of the 5.56mm calibre G36 assault rifle in the early 1990s. The lightweight, 3.6kg, low maintenance rifle is currently used by the German, Spanish armed forces and the NATO Rapid Reaction Force. The IdZ system includes the Heckler & Koch AG36 underbarrel 40mm grenade launcher which fits the G36 rifle.

The G36 is equipped with a short stroke gas piston that expels forwards away from the soldier. The gas system does not foul back into the weapon interior. This gives reliable operation even after firing 15,000 rounds without cleaning. The rifle can be disassembled and reassembled without tools. The fire selector lever, which serves as a safety switch, allows firing in single shot, multiple round, burst and fully automatic modes

ANTI TANK ROCKET LAUNCHER
The Dynamit Nobel Panzerfaust 3 anti-tank rocket launcher is fitted with a Dynarange computing sight. The system comprises a disposable rocket launch tube containing the rocket and a reusable sighting and firing unit. The rocket is armed with a shaped charge warhead. The system is suitable for urban warfare deployment and can be fired from an enclosed space. After a flight of about 5m from the launch tube the rocket's internal safety fuse is released. The PzF 3 fitted with a hollow charge which penetrates reactive armour and the PzF 3 Bunkerfaust is deployed against concrete bunkers and other hardened targets. Panzerfaust has a range of 300m against moving targets and 500m against stationary targets.

MP7 PERSONAL DEFENCE WEAPON
The advantage of the small lightweight MP7 personal defence weapon is that it is compact enough to be carried like a handgun but still provides the target penetration and modern body armour penetration capability of an assault rifle. The Kommando Spezialkrafte (KSK), the German Army special operations force, has used the Heckler & Koch MP7 since 2002. The MP7 weighs less than 4lb loaded.

The MP7 can be field stripped very quickly without tools. Very little maintenance and cleaning are required because the gas system keeps the weapon clean. Test firings at a range of 45m demonstrate a clustered target grouping of diameter less than 2in in 10-shot semiautomatic mode.

The MP7 has a flat bullet trajectory and full penetration of CRISAT protection, i.e. 1.6mm titanium combined with 20 layers of Kevlar, at 200m target range.

MG4 LIGHT MACHINE GUN
The Heckler & Koch 5.56mm x 45 MG4 or MG43 belt fed machine gun is gas operated with a rotary bolt similar to the HK G36 series. The gun, weighing 8.55kg, has a folding buttstock. Unlike other Heckler & Koch designs, the gun has only safe and full modes of fire. The barrel length is 480mm and the overall length is 1,050mm.

WEAPON SIGHT

The Zeiss Optronics AN/PAS-13A (V) thermal weapon sight for rifles and light weapons is equipped with a cadmium mercury telluride (CdHgTe) 40 x 16 detector array operating in the 3.4 to 4.2 micron waveband. The site is easily and quickly mounted on a weapon without tools. The detector is fitted with a thermo-electric cooler. The image has 160 lines, with 160 pixels per line. The weapon sight has interchangeable observation and targeting telescopes each with selectable fields of view. An additional RS-170 interface can be used for external viewing.


The elements of the German Army IdZ Infantryman of the Future system include: bullet-proof vest, NBC protection, night vision equipment, digital navigation and communication, tactical speech and data communication and a new range of weapons.
In December 2004, the German army placed an order for 196 full production IdZ V1 model systems, for delivery between 2005 and 2007.


The German Army carried out a five-month trial of the prototype IdZ systems together with additional squad weapons and sighting systems in Kosovo during 2002.


The infantryman's main weapon is the Heckler & Koch 5.56mm calibre G36 assault rifle, currently used by the German and Spanish armies and the NATO Rapid Reaction Force.


The NavICom C4I system provides the soldier with a digital moving map display showing the soldier's own position, the position of his comrades, danger zones, targets and the enemy situation.


The IDZ includes nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) protection.


The MP7 personal defence weapon is compact enough to be carried like a handgun but provides the target and body armour penetration capability of an assault rifle.


Digital voice and data radio communications instantly provide the soldier with commands and reconnaissance data.

LAND WARRIOR - INTEGRATED MODULAR FIGHTING SYSTEM, USA

The US Land Warrior is an integrated fighting system for individual infantry soldiers which gives the soldier enhanced tactical awareness, lethality and survivability. The systems integrated into Land Warrior are the weapon system, helmet, computer, digital and voice communications, positional and navigation system, protective clothing and individual equipment. The Land Warrior system will be deployed by infantry, and combat support soldiers, including rangers, airborne, air assault, light and mechanized infantry soldiers.

The US Army launched the Land Warrior program in 1994. An engineering and manufacturing development contract was awarded to Raytheon Systems, then Hughes Aircraft Company. Plans were drafted to build an Initial Capability (formerly Land Warrior Block 1) and then a Land Warrior Stryker Interoperable (formerly Land Warrior Block 2).

In February 2003, a contract was awarded to General Dynamics Decision Systems (now General Dynamics C4 Systems) to enhance the Land Warrior system with integration to the US Army digital communications, interoperability with the Stryker Brigade Combat Vehicle and a system weight reduction. The industrial team led by General Dynamics C4 Systems includes General Dynamics Land Systems, Computer Sciences Corporation, Kaiser Electro-Optics Inc, Omega Training Group, PEMSTAR, PEMSTAR Pacific Consultants and Thales Communications.

The first Land Warrior Stryker Interoperable systems will be delivered in 2005 for testing and assessment. Low rate initial production (LRIP) is scheduled to begin in 2006 with entry into service in 2007.

In February 2005, the US Army decided to merge the Land Warrior ATD program with the Future Force Warrior ATD, to enable spiral development of new technologies more efficiently. The merged program is managed by General Dynamics C4 Systems.

VERSIONS

The system is modular and tailored for the soldier's task and mission. The unit commander decides the components of Land Warrior that will be deployed for a mission.

The two main Land Warrior configurations are for the soldier and the squad leader. The soldier LW version includes a radio with short range inter-squad voice and data communications. A squad leader's LW system includes a multi-band inter- and intra-team SINCGARS compatible radio, a keyboard and handheld flat panel display.

FIGHTING LOAD VEST
The soldier wears a Fighting Load Vest for carrying and interfacing with the sensors and the computer. The soldier is able to adjust the load distribution from shoulders to hips while on the move. The electronic systems are connected and integrated via the ten-port hub installed on the body.

The soldier's navigation system comprises a global positioning system (GPS) and a pedometer dead reckoning system that tracks the soldier's position and is used when the GPS is unavailable, e.g. inside buildings. The GPS uses five satellites and defines the soldier's position to an accuracy of 10m.

The power system, either disposable or rechargeable batteries weighing 1.1kg (2.5lb), is installed on the body. The system provides between eight and 24 operating hours of power for the sensors and computer. The disposable batteries have longevity of four to 12 hours and the rechargeable batteries eight to ten hours. The US Army Communications-Electronics Command awarded Vitronics a contract in 2002 for the integration of power aware technologies into Land Warrior.

The Land Warrior computer is also installed on the body. The computer operates on Windows 2000 operating system and uses a 500MHz Intel Strong Arm processor. The battlefield software is installed on the computer. The sensor data is downloaded onto the computer.

A multiband intra and inter team radio (MBITR), integrated into the vest allows voice communications between the infantry soldiers. The Land Warrior Squad Radio, supplied by Thales, is a SINCGARS compatible, eight-channel radio operating over 30MHz to 88MHz. Its design is based on a repackaged commercially available radio, the PRC-6745 Leprechaun radio by Thales Communications. The soldier radio is based on existing radios.

HELMET

The 2kg (4.5lb) Land Warrior helmet provides ballistic protection and carries the main components of the soldier's communications systems.

The wireless local area network (WLAN) antenna is installed in the helmet and connects via the hub to the MBITR radio carried in the soldier's fighting load vest. The range of the radio is 1km within line-of-sight.

The helmet carries a Head-Mounted Display (HMD), which is positioned over the soldier's dominant eye and provides command and control information and situational awareness. The display shows the video from the daylight video scope or the infrared thermal weapon scope mounted on the soldier's weapon. The display also shows satellite and topographical maps with friendly positions, updated every 30 seconds. The soldier can switch screens using the select button on the stock of the rifle. The helmet-mounted display is used for zeroing the daylight video scope, capturing battlefield images and for sending and receiving data.

SOLDIER CONTROL SYSTEM

The Land Warrior control system is carried on the soldier's body. This enables the soldier to interact with the menus in the helmet-mounted display. The control unit has a joystick for moving the cursor, and mouse buttons for menu selection on the helmet-mounted display. Three programmable buttons can be set to push-to-talk and for zeroing weapons.

A SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card reader identifies the soldier and controls access.

WEAPON

The Land Warrior infantry soldier is armed with an M4 Carbine, .223 caliber, with a 30-round magazine. The M4 Carbine operates in semi-automatic or three shot burst. The rifle is fitted with a Picatinny rail for mounting sights and a grenade launcher.

The Daylight Video Scope (DVS) has a zoom with magnification 1.5x to 6x. The Land Warrior Thermal Weapon Sight (TWS) from DRS Electro-Optical Systems Group, operating in the 8 to 12 micron band, can be fitted on top of the M4.

A multifunction laser measures the azimuth and range to the target and designates the target with a red dot.

Programmable control buttons on the weapon for push to talk, switch screens and take a picture commands, allow the soldier to carry out procedures without lowering the weapon. A quick disconnect weapon cable connects the weapon electronics to the hub.

The laser rangefinder and digital compass gives the soldier the range and direction of the hostile target. The data, coupled with the soldier's own location (defined by his global positioning system), provide the soldier with accurate target location when he calls for indirect or support fire and for combat identification.

LAND WARRIOR SOFTWARE
The Land Warrior software suite contains six main software packages for weapon sights and for data. The mapping software package controls the display of satellite generated and topographical maps. The satellite image technology allows maps to be generated and viewed by the infantry soldier within ten minutes, compared to the six to eight hour time delay currently experienced by front line soldiers. Friendly positions on maps are updated every 30 seconds.

The echelon selection control software allows the soldier to control the amount of data received, for example the positions of team members, squad or company. The software ensures that the soldier is not overloaded with data but receives the information needed for his mission and situation. The send image program allows the soldier to capture and send battlefield images.

STRYKER VEHICLE INTEGRATION KIT
When the Land Warrior soldiers are in the Stryker vehicle, a Vehicle Integration Kit allows voice, data and power communication via an umbilical connection. The Land Warrior soldiers in the Stryker vehicle can then communicate by voice and data to soldiers inside and outside the vehicle, to soldiers in other Stryker vehicles and, through the Stryker vehicle's Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2) Appliqué, to the Army Battle Command System.


The US Army Land Warrior is an integrated fighting system for individual infantry soldiers that gives the soldier enhanced tactical awareness, lethality and survivability.




Land Warrior systems include the weapon, helmet, computer, digital and voice communications, positional and navigation system, protective clothing and individual equipment.


The Land Warrior infantry soldier is armed with an M4 Carbine, .223 caliber, fitted with a Daylight Video Scope (DVS) and Thermal Weapon Sight (TWS).


When the Land Warrior soldiers are in the Stryker vehicle, a Vehicle Integration Kit allows voice, data and power communication via an umbilical connection.


Programmable control buttons on the weapon allow the soldier to carry out procedures without lowering the weapon. A quick disconnect weapon cable connects the weapon electronics to the hub.

Stumbled into this article about Future Combat Systems on how future tanks may look like. Sorry no pictures but read on:

Future Combat System (FCS)
The new conception of the Future Combat Systems [plural] as a distributed battlefield system of systems [in the 20-ton class] represents a rather dramatic departure from the previous concept of the Future Combat System [singular] which was focused on a 40-ton tank.

The US Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command's future land combat system vehicle is a 40-ton concept based on evolutionary tank design and technology which pushes the two-person crew down and forward into the hull with a remote turret. The crew receives information from on-board target acquisition and hit avoidance sensors. Target acquisition sensors are the gunner's primary sight, a panoramic sight and an auxiliary sight. Hit avoidance sensors are mounted in the four corners of the turret. A high pressure, 120mm gun (XM291) is mounted on the turret.

Variable height suspension presents a lower, smaller target and makes the tank more survivable. The height can be lowered to 64 inches or raised to 79 inches. At its maximum height, the tank has a 19-inch ground clearance equal to the M1 fleet. Other survivability technologies include a hull front with 40 inches of armor that uses advanced passive with integral reactive armor for large caliber kinetic energy and chemical energy protection. The hull flanks and turret front and flanks have electromagnetic armor. The armor will be supplemented by signature management, hit avoidance and active protection. Eighty smoke grenade launchers are buried under the skin of the turret armor. Increased cross country mobility could be provided by an electric drive transmission and semi-active suspension which would enable the vehicle to obtain speeds of about 45 miles per hour. Its light weight increases strategic deployability by allowing two to three vehicles per C-5 cargo plane and increasing the number of vehicles that can be transported by ship, rail or highway.

The Future Combat System (FCS) Integrated TD (2000–06) will demonstrate the maturity of the FCS candidate’s revolutionary technologies in the vehicle configuration required for operation in the Army After Next. Leap–ahead lethality in vehicles 50 percent lighter is required to employ strategic mobility throughout the AAN vision. Using the M1A2 Abrams as a baseline, it will demonstrate 50% reduced crew workload, 40% reduced GVW, 20% increase in fuel economy, and a 40% increase in cross-country speed, and leap ahead lethality. Critical issues to be addressed are the acceptance of two crew vehicle operation, leap ahead mobility, non traditional survivability (replacing ballistic protection with signature management, countermeasures, and active protection), and indefensible lethality (both direct and indirect fire).Critical issues to be addressed are the acceptance of two–crew–vehicle operation, leap–ahead mobility (60 mph cross country), nontraditional survivability (replacing ballistic protection with signature management, countermeasures, and active protection), and indefensible lethality (both direct and indirect fire). Virtual prototypes will be constructed and evaluated, and a system integration laboratory (SIL) will be implemented with laboratory hardware to validate electronics integration.

The Future Combat System will be a revolutionary system providing greater mobility while achieving an overall system weight approaching 40 tons (<50 tons desired). The FCS lethality goals include high probability of kill in extended direct fire ranges as well as long ranges (10Km+ desired) in non line-of-sight conditions. While there is a strong interest in the expected lethality and logistics benefits from an electromagnetic based armament system, the technology is continuing to overcome technical barriers and validate target defeat capability. Therefore, the FCS Armament TD will represent a less risky solution to FCS lethality goals and facilitate successful demonstration of the planned TARDEC FCS Integrated TD in the FY06 timeframe.

The gun will be a derivative of XM291 tank gun developed originally for the future Abrams upgrades in a 120mm configuration. The XM291 gun design consisted of an integral cannon, mount, and recoil mechanism that could be installed, as one integrated unit, in a combat vehicle from the front of the vehicle. Technology application to the XM291 configuration will include a composite gun tube for reduced weight and balance of the gun at the trunnion, and Electro-Thermal Ignition and pulse-forming network transitioned from the ElectroThermal-Chemical technology program being conducted by the Army Research Laboratory, providing higher velocity through controlled burning of propellant as well as very reproducible ignition cycles. The gun design will also include an integral muzzle brake to reduce recoil forces on the vehicle’s lighter weight structure, smart barrel actuator to actively control the position of the muzzle at projectile exit enhancing accuracy, and a composite gun tube thermal shroud configuration significantly reducing gun tube signature by enemy radar.

The 120 mm XM291 Gun used enhancements developed by Watervliet Arsenal (WVA) and Benet Laboratories to improve gun performance. Compatibility for refit to the M1A1 or M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank was another design requirement. Gun enhancements include improved breech design, thermal shroud, modular recoil design, and improved firepower. The cannon can be increased in caliber, if required, to 140mm with a simple tube change.

The 120mm/140mm XM91 Autoloader was designed, fabricated, installed, and successfully tested in the Advanced TAnk Cannon (ATAC) System vehicle testing. The Autoloader automatically takes rounds from tank storage areas and loads them into the breech of the tank gun -- previously a manual operation. The Autoloader can be upgraded to support automated replenishment of the tank's ammunition from a resupply vehicle. Development has involved mechanical design and analysis, writing of control algorithms, and control system design. The project also involved extensive prototype testing, both in the laboratory and at proving grounds. An innovative feature of the Autoloader is control of projectile loading velocity by gripping the shell and adjusting (in real time) its acceleration and deceleration.

The latest tanks are already well armed with guns of 120mm or 125mm, which are capable of defeating heavy armor, and their performance can be stretched further. However, there are indications that, even at their best, these guns will not be able to defeat the kinds of armour that are being developed for future tanks. In that situation, it is necessary to resort to guns of larger calibre, and several countries have been working for some time on 140mm guns that fire APFSDS projectiles with twice the muzzle energy of those fired by the current 120mm tank guns. As part of this development, the German firm of Rheinmetall has mounted its 140mm gun in a Leopard 2 tank. The Swiss Federal Construction Works has also mounted its 140mm gun in a Leopard 2.

These experiments indicate that the retrofitting of 140mm guns in the existing tanks is possible. But it presents a number of major problems. In particular, 140mm rounds are large and heavy, which makes them difficult, if not impossible, to manhandle. As a result they require automatic loading systems, and this implies major changes to tank turrets and a reduction in the size of tank crews from four to three men.

The UK, Germany and France are working on a 140mm tank gun. While these can be fitted to tank turrets, the size of the rounds and the need for an autoloader make the practicality of this doubtful. One option may be to adopt an assault gun configuration capable of high elevation fire. A 140mm high velocity gun could be at least equal in range to a 155mm howitzer [5.5" (140mm) were the standard medium field piece of the British Army in the Second World War]. A 140mm gun on an assault gun body could be a useful weapon system both for divisional artillery and to reinforce armored or infantry attacks. The only problems with this idea at present is that the prototype 140mm gun is smoothbore, and no 140mm Guided projectiles currently exist.

The only type of automatic loading system which may readily be installed in existing tanks is one installed in the turret bustle. In consequence, the configuration of tanks rearmed with 140mm guns should resemble that already adopted for the Japanese Type 90 and the French AMX Leclerc. In fact, this configuration has actually been adopted for CATTB, the Component Advanced Technology Test Bed built recently in the US to explore the future form of tanks. Thus CATTB has a three-man crew and a bustle auto loader for its XM-291 gun, which can be fitted with either a 120mm or a 140mm barrel.

Because of the problems they pose and the absence of a threat which would urge their adoption, the development of 140mm tank guns is proceeding slowly. The problems they pose are also encouraging people to consider potential alternatives to conventional 140mm guns. One of them is liquid-propellant guns, which were seriously considered for tanks.

The second potential alternative is electromagnetic guns. Their main attraction is that they can launch projectiles at more than 3 000m/s, or twice the muzzle velocity of APFSD projectiles fired by current tank guns. The size, weight and other problems associated with electromagnetic guns do not make them a practical proposition for tanks. Nevertheless, there is a belief in the defence ministries of the US and the UK that, given further development, electromagnetic guns might become the main armament of tanks by the year 2015 or so.

The third alternative is hybrid electrothermal-chemical guns. They have been considered a more immediate proposition for tanks than electromagnetic guns because they only require part of the projectile propulsion energy to come from the electrical equipment, which can therefore be smaller. In fact, electrothermal-chemical guns were being proposed in the US five years ago as the main armament of the next version of the Ml Abrams tank. However, they are now seen to require much further development before they can be seriously considered for tanks.

The term electrothermal chemical propulsion applies to propulsion techniques (typically applied to gun propulsion, but with some potential applications to space propulsion) wherein the burning characteristics of a chemical propellant are enhanced with an electrically induced plasma. ETC fits into a group of kinetic energy weapons (KEWs) technologies aimed at enhancing lethality by increasing velocity. In order of increasing electrical power requirements, ETC falls between true EM launchers (rail guns and coil guns) and pure chemical propulsion.

In the late 1980s, there was also some interest in pure electrothermal (plasma-driven) weapons. However, these weapons have extremely high electrical power requirements. While ETC continues to be an area of interest, the functional goals of the technology have been scaled back substantially in recent years, again because of primary power considerations. Initially, researchers envisioned ETC as a way to increase muzzle energy by sustaining the design pressure over the full length of the barrel. However, current estimates indicate that this would require on the order of 10 MJ of electrical power.

The FCS ammunition demonstrated will incorporate novel penetrators and high performance propellant formulations for enhanced target defeat capability without reduced gun tube wear life or increase in vehicle vulnerability, and axial/radial thruster mechanisms to compensate for system errors increasing accuracy. It is expected that a 100%+ increase in armor penetration could be realized over the M829A2 at extended ranges with up to 70% increase in system accuracy (Ph) at 3km under stationary conditions over the M829A2/M1A2. The cartridge envelope will be determined from a number of 6.2/6.3 technology programs including the Target Destruct TD, Advanced KE Cartridge, and the feed of results to the Advanced Future Cannon Systems work package which will conduct the virtual prototyping studies of FCS Armament systems meeting the goals of FCS.

A compact autoloader mechanism will be required to facilitate expected vehicle configurations where the crew station is in the hull, separated from gun/ammunition compartment. The specific autoloader configuration will be defined in conjunction with the TARDEC FCS contractor vehicle concept activity and will leverage early 6.2 compact autoloader efforts that resulted in the demonstration of high density magazine storage capacities, improved fratricide protection, and weight savings. Sensor technology to detect and resolve loader anomalies under operating conditions will be incorporated

The fire control system will leverage commercially based open electronic architecture developed by TACOM-TARDEC and that which may be pursued for the Future Scout Cavalry System ATD program. Promising technologies such as linear and non-linear lead solution, improved ballistics, dynamic cant sensor, down-range wind sensor, auto-zero, direct "gearless" drive, smart barrel actuators, electronic image stabilization and modern digital servo control will be developed for the specific armament system characteristics. These fire control technologies will provide an additional 30% increase in system accuracy at 3km under stationary conditions but will provide over 500% increase in accuracy during moving conditions.

The combined effects of accuracy improvement in ammunition and fire control will provide an estimated increase in system accuracy of 100%+ at 3km under stationary conditions, and 500% under moving condition as compared to the current Abrams tank.

:aberet:

Here's more about this new thread:


Future tanks could surprise critics
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., National Journal


Just seven years ago, every self-styled strategic thinker knew that history had ended, that the dot-com boom would last forever, and, in military circles, that the tank was dead. The steel behemoths that had ruled the plains of Europe for six decades were too ungainly for a new world order that required rapid deployment of troops to small conflicts across the globe.
In 1994, Chechen guerrillas armed only with rocket-propelled grenades had destroyed more than 200 Russian armored vehicles in 30 days, and the U.S. Army was so slow in deploying its heavy machinery to the Balkans in 1999 that the ground forces never participated in the war in Kosovo.


"Power is increasingly defined not by mass or size but by mobility and swiftness," then-presidential candidate George W. Bush said at the Citadel military academy in September 1999. "Yet, today our military is still organized more for Cold War threats than for the challenges of a new century -- for Industrial Age operations, rather than for Information Age battles."

Just three weeks later, Gen. Eric Shinseki, President Clinton's Army chief of staff, announced a "transformation" program to replace the Army's 70-ton M1 Abrams main battle tank with vehicles weighing less than 20 tons, light enough to be flown around the world into areas with only dirt landing strips.

This "Future Combat System," as the Army termed it, would be protected not by heavy armor but by a linked computer network of sensors, robots, and precision weapons designed to find and destroy the enemy from a distance.

September 11, 2001, seemed the final proof of lightweight warfare. Nineteen terrorists with box cutters bypassed the entire American military. The United States retaliated against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan with special forces and smart bombs, but no tanks.

Sixteen months later, the Bush administration rebuked Shinseki for insisting on a larger, heavier ground force for the invasion of Iraq. But Iraq showed that the age of the armored dinosaur was not over after all.


It was 70-ton M1s and 34-ton M2 Bradley infantry carriers that spearheaded the Iraq invasion -- not only by racing across the open desert but also by pushing deep into downtown Baghdad, shrugging off the same RPGs that had destroyed the Russians in Grozny a decade before. And once the insurgency began, the nimble 2.6-ton Humvees that the Pentagon preferred for "low-intensity" operations proved fatally vulnerable to ambush by rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices.


It was the 70-ton Abrams that plowed through IEDs and RPGs as coalition forces retook Falluja and Najaf. As late as 2002, the Army's armor school at Fort Knox had been teaching tankers to bypass urban areas altogether. But in Iraqi cities today, said Col. David Hubner, who led armored forces into Samarra, "I'd tell my tankers, 'You should have the same mind-set as Tyrannosaurus rex. There's nobody who's going to take you out.' "


While heavy armor is crushing the enemy when called upon in Iraq, back in Washington, the Future Combat System is facing extinction. "The project is over budget, behind schedule, and probably impractical," declared a July cover of Congressional Quarterly; the headline inside was "Dream Army's Rude Awakening."


The FCS has four big problems. The first is financial: The Army is squabbling with outside estimators over whether the program as planned will cost $130 billion, $200 billion, or as much as $300 billion.


The second problem is technological: By the last independent assessment, the computer network protocols, the digital radios, the armed scout robots, the system to shoot down incoming RPGs -- all told, 32 of 49 "critical technologies" that make up the Future Combat System -- have been tested only as "basic technological components" and only in a "simulated environment."


The third challenge is physical: The vehicles that are the linchpin of the FCS have swelled to 26 tons, making them too heavy for the Air Force's standard C-130 transport but still too light to match the protection of the massive M1's armor.


The fourth obstacle is conceptual: The Army has crammed so many ideas into the FCS -- "18+1+1 Systems" (that is, 20 systems), including a computer network, seven kinds of robots, and eight kinds of manned vehicles, according to the latest official Pentagon white paper -- that even program officials struggle to describe what the goal of the FCS program actually is: an updated brigade, built around a light-to-medium-weight armored vehicle, which will be supported by many more computer networks, sensors, and robots than any current mechanized unit.


Yet when describing the FCS, Army spokesmen oscillate unconvincingly between impenetrable jargon such as "soldier-centric" and late-night infomercial-speak such as "see first, understand first, shoot first, and finish decisively!"


So the same vultures of conventional wisdom that circled the heavy tank just seven years ago are now eyeing the Future Combat System. In 1999, everyone said that tanks were too big and too hard to maneuver in a modern, unconventional war, especially in cities. In 2006, everyone says that FCS vehicles are too small and too delicate to survive in a modern, unconventional war, especially in cities. And now, as then, the conventional wisdom appears to be mostly wrong.


The Army's inarticulate enthusiasm for the FCS has fostered three self-defeating myths: that the 26-ton FCS vehicles will replace 70-ton M1s in every capacity; that FCS units will deploy en masse by air to anywhere in the world; and that FCS troops will outfight every enemy, from Arab insurgents to North Korean missiles, by substituting information technology for heavy armor.

Congress, think tanks, and reporters are understandably incredulous. "You've got to be careful not to be taken in by all this great revolutionary bullshit, because none of it is field-tested," said retired Army Col. Douglas MacGregor, a vitriolic and influential critic. But some very real lights are hidden under this bushel of unproven high-tech hype:


Although the Army will mothball some big tanks, FCS brigades will serve alongside heavy-armored units -- using today's M1 Abrams and M2 Bradleys upgraded with new electronics -- until well after 2020, providing a hedge against technological shortfalls or unexpected threats.

Whatever the limits of airlift, the hybrid-electric FCS vehicles will be much more fuel-efficient on land than the huge turbine-driven M1s -- which get half a mile to the gallon -- maneuvering more quickly and needing fewer of the supply convoys that have proven so fatally vulnerable in Iraq.

Whether their high-tech defenses materialize or not, the eight variants of the 26-ton FCS vehicle will have at least as much old-fashioned armor as anything today except the M1. In fact, of the 332 vehicles that run on tracks rather than tires in a current "heavy brigade," from mortar carriers to mobile command posts, 111 are lighter and less-armored than their proposed FCS replacements.

The revolutionary rhetoric was overblown from the beginning, and since 1999 the Army has quietly reinserted traditional military virtues into the program. As recently as April, for example, the Pentagon white paper depicted the FCS "reconnaissance and surveillance vehicle" as a lightly armed platform reliant on long-range sensors, but data given to National Journal in recent weeks show instead a heavily armed machine capable of fighting ambushes as it advances and sentries as it scouts ahead.


The FCS vehicles aren't well suited for head-on slogging matches with big enemy tanks -- that will remain the job of the massive M1 -- but they are arguably better than the M1 for the fluid wars of the future that will have no clear front line.


The truth about the Future Combat System is that it is far less revolutionary than the Army likes to claim. And that's a good thing: It means that it is far more likely to work than the critics believe.

You Say You Want a Revolution?


The U.S. is a superpower of technology. But American ingenuity goes only so far. This summer, after six years of sticking to a 20-ton ceiling for the FCS, the Army publicly accepted that some variants would weigh as much as 26 tons.

"There are too many compromises in an 18-ton vehicle," said Col. Charles Bush of the Army staff's Force Development Division. "The sweet spot is about 24 to 26 tons," he said. "At that weight, I can achieve most of my lethality, survivability, and deployability objectives."


At this weight, the Army says, the FCS can provide all-around protection against mines, the rocket-propelled grenades favored by guerrillas, and quick-firing cannon shells as large as 30 millimeters, the standard caliber of the guns on Russian-made infantry carriers.

An FCS vehicle won't stop the 125 mm shells fired by larger Russian-made tanks -- in both wars with Iraq, shells fired by such tanks bounced off the M1's front armor -- but an FCS vehicle will provide protection equal to that of the M1's side and rear, and to the armor on all sides of the latest-model M2A3 Bradleys that have accompanied the bigger tanks deep into Baghdad, Falluja, and Najaf.


In fact, the infantry carrier variant of the FCS closely resembles the Bradley. The FCS vehicle has a slightly larger gun, 30 millimeters instead of 25; it loses the Bradley's TOW anti-tank missiles, which have seen little use against Iraqi insurgents and which fly so slowly that a targeted tank could fire back, lethally, before they hit; and the FCS has double the carrying capacity -- a full squad of nine infantrymen instead of the Bradley's four to six.

And the quarter-century of materials research since the Bradley's basic structure was designed in the 1970s has made it possible to get the same protection in a 26-ton vehicle as in the old 34-ton tank.


Another evolutionary improvement lost in the revolutionary hype is that almost every bit of super-technology being developed for the FCS could be installed on the M2 Bradley or the M1 Abrams. Shinseki's successor as chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, has repeatedly overhauled the FCS program, ultimately delaying deployment of a fully FCS-equipped brigade by four years (to 2016). But he has ensured that current armored vehicles will be retrofitted with selected FCS technologies.


Even the computerized communications-and-command network -- the fundamental system linking all of the FCS's disparate parts -- builds on a principle a decade old. In 1997, the Army tested a prototype of such a network on every M1 tank and Bradley in an armored brigade, and then expanded it to an entire division. In 2003, a stripped-down version of that network, "Blue Force Tracker," was hastily installed on selected vehicles of other Army and Marine units going into Iraq. Troops have increasingly come to rely on the new technology.


"It was great to be able to look on the screen and see blue icons" representing friendly units, said Capt. Sam Donnelly, a staffer for a battalion command post during the Iraq invasion. "But our primary means of command-and-control was an FM radio, a map, and thumbtacks." As the campaign progressed, however, troops warmed to the new system -- and as units dispersed beyond the effective ranges of their Cold War radios, Donnelly said, "the only real contact we had with them was through [network] text message."


Still, the weakness of the improved communications network was the lack of good information. Donnelly's unit fought through repeated ambushes, and the Army nearly lost a critical bridge over the Euphrates, "Objective Peach," because neither scouts nor spy planes nor sensors spotted 8,000 Iraqis with 70 armored vehicles lurking under old-fashioned camouflage until they counterattacked. Since then, network upgrades and more unmanned drones have hardly made U.S. forces immune to surprise attacks.

The Stryker Experience


One way to judge whether the FCS vehicles will work is to look at the Army's other light-armored solution to modern warfare: the Stryker, a personnel carrier that moves on giant rubber tires instead of tracks and, in its 19-ton basic configuration, doesn't stop anything bigger than a .50-caliber bullet.

Ordered in 2000 as an "interim" step toward the FCS, Strykers were supposed to substitute information for mass. They were battle-tested in Iraq, where they came protected not only by their new electronics but also by an extra 2.5 tons of old-fashioned armor.


That additional metal made a difference, said Lt. Col. Michael Gibler, who was a battalion commander in the eastern half of Mosul in 2004 and 2005: "Twenty-seven RPGs hit Strykers in my battalion alone; not one of them penetrated." His unit of 70 Strykers was also hit by 250 roadside bombs and car bombs: "My vehicle was hit by three; my sergeant major's was hit by five," he recalled. "I only lost one soldier to an IED. He was exposed in an [open] hatch." Although both critics and cheerleaders call Stryker and the FCS an unprecedented lightening of the Army, these systems are actually a turn toward heavier forces in the long struggle toward quick deployment. Gibler's battalion, for example, is much heavier today than it was before the Shinseki era.

The unit had been stripped of its armored vehicles and heavy artillery in the early 1980s, when the enemy was the newly Islamic Iran that threatened interruption of vital oil supplies far from established U.S. bases. The Army tried to create a force that could be deployed quickly to the Middle East by air: first, the "Rapid Deployment Force"; then an experimental "High-Technology Light Division," with air-droppable armored vehicles and missile-shooting dune buggies. The end result was plain old "light divisions" consisting of foot soldiers, towed artillery pieces, and a handful of Humvees.


The unit that actually did dash by air to Saudi Arabia in 1990, after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, was the 82nd Airborne, a division of foot soldiers backed by a handful of air-deployable but notoriously breakdown-prone M551 Sheridan light tanks. The 82nd's troops had so much less firepower and mobility than the Iraqi tank divisions arrayed against them, and so little hope of stopping an attack, that they bitterly called themselves "the speed bump."


But Saddam's tanks stayed put in Kuwait, and the heavy U.S. M1 tanks, M2 infantry carriers, and self-propelled M109 howitzers arrived by sea to devastate the Iraqi armor. So, in the drawdown that followed the Persian Gulf War victory, the Army sacrificed its light forces to save the heavies.

In 1996, Gen. Dennis Reimer, the Army chief of staff, not only phased out the Airborne's last M551 Sheridans, the only air-deployable armored fighting vehicle in service, but also canceled its replacement, the M8 Armored Gun System, which could be stripped down to 19 tons for airlift and then beefed up to 26 tons with bolt-on armor -- the same weight as an FCS machine fully loaded for combat.

Armored Gun Resurrected


The Army missed this light-armored capability just three years later in 1999, when its heavy forces struggled to quickly deploy from Germany south to the Balkans, and missed it even more in 2003, when Turkey denied U.S. forces permission to cross its territory into Iraq.

Instead of the 15,000 soldiers and 1,500 armored vehicles of the 4th Infantry Division, the northern front shrank to the 2,000 foot soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, reinforced by just 41 Humvees, 15 M113 armored personnel carriers, five M2 Bradleys, and five M1 tanks, all laboriously delivered by air.

The elite Airborne still managed to fight off much-larger Iraqi forces. But with so few vehicles, troops could not dash south to trap Saddam's loyalists before they retreated into his hometown of Tikrit and formed the first center of the insurgency.


Before a 2005 deployment to Afghanistan, the 82nd Airborne was "begging" to break the few Armored Gun System prototypes out of storage, said MacGregor, the Army critic, who considers the cancellation of the gun system one of the Army's great missed opportunities to fill the light-armored gap. "We've wasted years."


Maybe not so coincidentally, one of the FCS variants, called the "mounted combat" version, has a 120 mm cannon and looks a lot like an updated Armored Gun System vehicle. Described by many as "the replacement for the Abrams tank," the mounted combat FCS vehicle is actually nothing of the kind. It is the resurrection of a light-armored capability that the Army had for decades and then threw away.


What "lightweight" vehicles bring to battle is not just new electronics but also, ironically, more old-fashioned mass -- not to the tank brigades, which hardly need it, but to the light infantry, which desperately does. Bitter experience in Iraq shows that even up-armored Humvees are vulnerable to roadside bombs.


Robert Scales is a retired Army major general and an influential author who has fought for more light-armored vehicles since the mid-1990s, when he started the "Army After Next" war games that gave birth to the FCS. Scales has collected data from Korea, Vietnam, and Falluja showing that "soldiers mounted [in armored vehicles] are 10 times less likely to become casualties than soldiers who are not," he said. But "there's nothing in my data to relate thickness of armor to survivability," he added. Even light armor saves lives.

"Eighty-one percent of all deaths in combat since 1945 have been [among] dismounted infantry," said Scales, who is now a consultant to the FCS program. "Yet the Army's had 23 percent of the defense budget since 1952. That's why we go to war in Humvees."

The Mobility Myth


But armor is only half of the solution to the wars of the 21st century. The other half is speed -- deploying quickly to the war zone, and then maneuvering quickly within it. How to balance the weight of armor with the necessity for speed remains the Army's dilemma.


America is the superpower of the air, just as Britannia once ruled the waves. Still, the U.S. Air Force has its limits. The Army, however, based its Future Combat System on a naive faith in its sister service's ability to transport the equipment to any battlefield. Until this year, Army spokesmen insisted that the FCS vehicles would weigh less than 20 tons, making them light enough to fly in fleets of C-130 transports, land on dirt strips, and roll off ready to fight.


"The problem with that concept is that it was developed by tankers who didn't have a clue," said Robert Killebrew, a retired infantry colonel who worked for Scales in the war games of the 1990s and is now part of his team again. Killebrew, who served with the Special Forces in Vietnam, has commanded ad hoc dirt airstrips set up for C-130s, "and I'll tell you," he said, "you beat them to pieces with that kind of traffic; they cannot be maintained, they're easy targets for artillery and rockets -- and the Air Force doesn't have that many C-130s, anyway."


The United States has 514 C-130s. With each plane carrying one FCS vehicle -- still do-able with the current 26-ton design, if crews unbolt most of the armor, fly it separately, and then bolt it back on, a process the Army says should take less than eight hours -- it would take all 514 to lift a single brigade's 332 FCS armored vehicles and a reasonable amount of supplies.

But even that unlikely scenario wouldn't keep Shinseki's promise to "deploy a brigade anywhere in the world in 96 hours." Most C-130s, fully loaded, have a range of only 1,000 miles, a third of the way across the Atlantic.

The newer, larger C-17s can carry three FCS vehicles, fully armored, around the globe. But even the Air Force's boldest budget requests only 220 C-17s, which means a theoretical maximum carrying capacity of 660 FCS vehicles or, more realistically, one brigade with a few of its hundreds of supply trucks.


The dirty secret is that Scales and company never actually wanted the C-130 for rapid deployment overseas. They knew perfectly well that the plane's range was just too short. They wanted the C-130 to maneuver brigades in 500-mile sprints once they had arrived in the war theater, outflanking ground-bound enemies in an airborne blitzkrieg. Imagine being able to "drop five brigades around Baghdad," Scales told National Journal in 2003. "The war's over in a day."


Faced with the limits of air transport, the Army now talks of airlifting only about one-third of one brigade behind enemy lines: "We could move a battalion through the air in an operationally meaningful way," said Col. Robert Beckinger, the FCS manager for the Training and Doctrine Command.

That's dialing things way down from the war games of the mid-1990s. But it is still many more armored fighting vehicles than the United States ever moved by air before it gave up its last airmobile light armor in 1996.

Supply Trains


For all the romance of airborne war, it is when the FCS vehicles reach the ground that they could really speed up operations. Built to burn jet fuel, the M1 Abrams's turbine engine makes the 70-ton tank one of the fastest vehicles ever to fight once it's on the battlefield, but the long journey to that battlefield is painfully slow because of frequent stops for gas.

"Every eight hours, you're going to burn 300 gallons, whether it's moving or not," because the engine also powers the tank's electronics, said Capt. Ray Bolar, an Army tank officer who has served two tours in Iraq. Even compared with six months of fighting in Ramadi in 2005, Bolar said, being a supply officer in the 2003 invasion "was maybe the hardest thing I have ever done."


Driving around the clock, the M1s covered 350 miles in 72 hours, nearly 120 miles a day, twice as fast as Patton's 3rd Army moved in 1944. But the M1s had to pull into improvised refueling stops three times a day.

By Scales's count, unarmored fuel trucks made 30,000 supply runs, averaging 800 miles apiece, through Iraqi territory to keep the big tanks moving. Support units got scrambled in the process. "Some New Mexico National Guard guys somehow got roped in and followed us to Baghdad," Bolar said. "It was, 'You got fuel?'


'Yeah.... '


'You're coming with us.' "


That April, at the moment of U.S victory, commanders nearly withdrew the famously successful quick-strike "thunder runs" of tank columns into downtown Baghdad because of a supply shortage. Instead, they shut down their M1s for two hours while the more fuel-efficient M2 Bradleys stood watch. Meanwhile, in the fiercest fighting of the day, the rear guard escorted unarmored trucks full of volatile fuel and ammunition into the city.


To keep the road into the city open, Maj. Harry (Zan) Hornbuckle, then a captain, held a crucial highway intersection called "Objective Curly" through eight straight hours of fighting. "I didn't have any tanks," he said, and his five Bradleys had no extra armor, just external storage racks for his troops' equipment: "The RPGs would hit the duffel bags and detonate [prematurely]."

All of his vehicles, and all of his men, survived the fight. But when the unarmored supply column drove through, "a couple of fuelers and a couple of ammo trucks got destroyed," Hornbuckle recalled. "That was the only killed-in-action of the day."


Despite desperate retrofitting with armor, the supply convoys remain the most vulnerable part of the U.S. force in Iraq. "Most people don't understand how dependent M1s and Bradleys are on that logistical umbilical cord," Scales said. Heavy armor can smash into cities, he said, "but it can't stay there and control populations."

By contrast, Stryker units routinely kept their much lighter vehicles in downtown Mosul for three days at a time without resupply, said Lt. Col. Gibler. And in the Shiite uprising of 2004, one Stryker battalion drove 300 miles from Mosul to Al Kut in the south -- fighting insurgents along the way -- in 48 hours.


The Army contends that an FCS brigade will need 10 to 30 percent less fuel than today's heavy brigades, 66 percent fewer mechanics, and one-third fewer supply trucks. Defense programs from fighter jets to warships have promised, and failed, to deliver such efficiencies before -- although the goal is more realistic this time because "you couldn't design a less fuel-efficient engine than the M1's," Killebrew said.

The FCS prototype chassis now being completed is the first U.S. military vehicle with a hybrid-electric drive. That means not only better mileage on the go but also enough batteries to run electronics with the engine off, and even a lighter transmission.


All of the mundane machinery of the FCS benefits from 30 years of refinement since the M1 and the M2 were designed in the late 1970s, said Maj. Gen. Charles Cartwright, the FCS program manager. Compact electric motors replace bulky hydraulic and mechanical systems. High-strength rubber tracks replace traditional steel tracks, allowing for a lighter suspension and saving almost two tons of weight.

The 120 mm cannon uses the same ammunition as current versions but weighs about a ton less and has recoil systems that enable a 26-ton vehicle to withstand the shock. Unlike today's mix of M1s, M2s, M109s, and M113s, Cartwright added, "every one of these manned ground [FCS] vehicles has the same engine, a common computer, a common chassis." And the FCS vehicles simply have less mass to move and maintain.

The Replacement Myth


In 1999, Gen. Shinseki proposed replacing the entire Army armored infrastructure with a uniform force of Future Combat System vehicles. Skeptical Capitol Hill staffers joked about a "big-bang theory" of modernization.


But the money never matched the ambition. As early as 2000, Army officials and documents acknowledged that it would take decades to replace the last M1s and M2s. Today, the Army's budget plans call for equipping just 15 of its 42 active-duty brigades with FCS vehicles, with the first brigade fully fielded by 2016 and the last by 2020. Larger tanks will remain in service through at least 2035, said Rickey Smith, an Army "capabilities integration" expert.


And the service will equip many M1s and Bradleys with FCS electronics. An all-FCS force, Smith said, is something "the nation can't afford and wouldn't want."


Even ardent FCS advocate Scales emphasizes using combined arms -- all kinds of light and heavy forces -- rather than relying on a single silver bullet to fight any war. "You don't just dump a bunch of [FCS] vehicles in the midst of the enemy," he said.


Scales's war-fighting scheme has Special Forces scouting the ground first, then airborne Rangers seizing the landing strips, then C-17s carrying FCS raiding parties behind enemy lines -- acting as the winged hammer to an overland anvil of both FCS and heavy brigades, with M1s on hand to crack the toughest nuts.


Modern armies always mix battle-tested and cutting-edge weapons, said Bruce Gudmundsson, a retired Marine major and the author of the definitive trilogy On Armor, On Infantry, and On Artillery.


"FCS aficionados feel compelled to compete directly with the M1," he said, but the two systems are very different -- and complementary. "Adding networked, [light-] armored vehicles armed with precision-guided missiles to our armored forces is a good idea," Gudmundsson said. "Replacing traditional armored vehicles with them is not."


War remains a brutal business. As long as the physics of breaking human bodies stay the same, the sheer weight of metal will have its uses, just as does the finesse provided by training, tactics, and intelligence. For all of the Army's emphasis on information technology, the future force will need mass as well.


"It won't be perfect in any environment," Killebrew said of the FCS. But it will be more adaptable across all environments, a "nice balance" between the foot sloggers of the light infantry and the fuel hoggers of the heavy armor. And, he added, the unpleasant surprises of the last five years are proof that "the Army has got to have more balance than ever, because we don't know how future wars are going to be fought."

Hope this info helps us see the future of tank warfare.

:aberet:

Akim:

please post a link to the site where you copied this article

The Most Important Future Military Technologies; Super lasers, binoculars that read minds, manipulating the “human terrain”

(Discover) The total proposed American defense budget for 2008 is more than half a trillion dollars—with $75 billion of that set aside for research and development. For decades, the Pentagon’s investment in science and technology has produced widely hailed achievements like the Internet and the Global Positioning System. It has also backed quixotic and costly failures, like space-based lasers. And sometimes it has gone off the deep end, funding such things as psychic spies and weapons that defy the laws of physics.

The Department of Defense began systematically funding basic and applied research in a big way after World War II. Today the Pentagon’s investment in science R&D remains a cornerstone of the country’s national security strategy. Yet in the aftermath of the low-tech attacks of 9/11, the growing insurgency in Iraq, and the threat of worldwide terrorism, technology experts both within and outside the Pentagon are questioning whether Defense Department research is producing the results that America needs.

So what are we getting for our money? That $75 billion budget covers a vast array of projects, from perfecting new weapon systems like the Joint Strike Fighter plane to studying pure physics. Focusing on the research side of R&D, DISCOVER looked at four key areas where the military is placing its bets: hypersonic vehicles, laser technology, using information technology and neuroscience to combine human and machine on the battlefield, and employing sociology and psychobiology to combat terrorism.

Hypersonics

For two decades, unconfirmed press reports have speculated that the United States has been developing Aurora, a top secret hypersonic aircraft, sometimes dubbed the SR-72. Rumors of such “black,” or classified, research programs are hard to squelch: How do you prove something does not exist? As recently as June, an article in Defense News, a trade publication, reported that the Air Force was developing “a stealthy 4,000-mph plane capable of flying to altitudes of about 100,000 feet, with transcontinental range.”

In comparison, the state-of-the-art SR-71 stealth reconnaissance plane, which flew from 1964 to 1998, topped out at about an airspeed of 2,200 mph and 85,000 feet, while the Concorde, the fastest commercial jet ever built, flew at a maximum speed of about 1,350 mph and an altitude of 60,000 feet.

The Aurora speculation has been fueled, in part, by the Defense Department’s classified budget requests, estimated by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, D.C., to total $30.1 billion for 2007, with about half going to classified R&D. That black budget has at times led to wild speculation, despite independent analysis indicating that much of the black money flows into satellites and other intelligence assets.

According to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists (also based in Washington, D.C.), a frequent critic of government secrecy, it would be hard in today’s world—though not impossible—to hide such a large classified program as a hypersonic aircraft. “In principle, it is possible to conduct a large black program,” he says, but the reality is that the larger the program and the more people involved in it, the harder it is to keep totally secret. “I suspect Aurora involved a small grain of truth, and lots of wishful thinking,” he adds.

Mark Lewis, the Air Force’s chief scientist, laughs about the persistence of the Aurora story. “That’s right, we got the technology from Area 51,” he jokes. In fact, Lewis says, hypersonic research really is progressing in notable ways, just not in the direction of an airplane. Lewis is particularly enthusiastic about the X-51 WaveRider, a hypersonic flight-test vehicle funded by the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s research and development arm. The WaveRider gets its name from its unique approach to coping with hypersonic shock waves that form in the air as it drills through the sky. Rather than fighting shock waves, the shape of the X-51 allows it to maximize those waves to provide lift and funnel compressed air into its scramjet engine.

The X-51 will most likely lead to missiles, which are substantially easier to construct and fly than piloted airplanes. In such applications, hypersonic technology could be important for the war on terror: According to Richard Hallion, who once served as the Air Force’s historian and is a former senior adviser for “counterintelligence and special programs oversight,” hypersonics could result in a missile capable of reaching its quarry before it has a chance to escape. “You might go after a fleeting target, a Zarqawi or an Osama bin Laden,” he says.

Death Rays

Like hypersonics, laser weapons involve boundary-pushing technology that has been in development for years. After more than two decades and billions of dollars of investment, there are still no deployed laser-weapon systems, which fall under the broad category of “directed energy weapons.” But even as expectations have fallen, some progress has been made. Gone is the 1980s vision of huge energy beams that would fell ballistic missiles in midflight, and fighters equipped with high-energy lasers still exist only in the realm of ambitious PowerPoint presentations. Currently most of the research focus is on more modestly powered beams. The Army, for example, is investing in an effort to develop solid-state lasers and says it will soon reach 100 kilowatts, about the minimum power needed to produce a deployable weapon. The signs look good that they will meet that goal; in February, the Solid State Heat Capacity Laser, built at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, hit the 67-kilowatt mark. DARPA is looking at more efficient technologies, like fiber lasers and liquid lasers, which could lead to smaller, more compact devices, while the Navy is researching a Free Electron Laser, an experimental technology that uses high-speed electrons to generate an extremely powerful focused beam of radiation. The Free Electron Laser is still in the lab, though, and probably will not be ready until after 2020.

The Missile Defense Agency for its part is focused more on chemical lasers, which draw prodigious energy from chemical reactions. One such device, the megawatt-class Airborne Laser currently installed on a Boeing 747, is intended to shoot down ballistic missiles. Air Force researchers are also slowly developing a less powerful chemical laser, called the Advanced Tactical Laser, designed to go on C-130H gunship. Mark Lewis of the Air Force acknowledges that even the Advanced Tactical Laser is not ready to deploy: “I’m not sure it’s even the right laser system,” he says. “Ultimately, you probably want to do solid-state [lasers].” Still, he feels that some elements of the system are providing a useful test bed for future weapons.

Despite many years of failed efforts, directed energy weapons are worth the investment, Lewis argues, because they fall into the high-risk, high-payoff category: They may fail, but if they work, they will provide a tremendous capability. “If we’re not failing a little bit, or every so often, then we’re not being bold enough in the research that we’re doing,” he maintains.

But how does the military guard against ideas that are so impossible or improbable that they’re not worth a single dime? A few years ago, DARPA, which prides itself on promoting far-out projects, proposed spending $30 million on a “hafnium bomb,” a type of nuclear weapon intended to release energy from atomic nuclei without either fission or fusion, using an approach similar to how energy is extracted from electrons in a laser. DARPA pursued the project even after outside advisory panels criticized the physics as bad science, and independent researchers were unable to replicate the basic results the research was based on. The agency abandoned the project only after Congress intervened.

DARPA, through its spokeswoman, Jan Walker, declined an interview, but Walker answered written questions. “A DARPA program can be very hard, but it can’t violate the laws of physics (or if so, have as its purpose the discovery of new phenomenology which may in fact cause the current laws to be reconsidered),” she wrote.

What Walker’s parenthetical bureaucratese appears to be saying is that sometimes DARPA will fund projects that violate the known laws of physics. So if current science can’t be used as a filter in such cases, how does DARPA decide which projects are worth funding? “The issue of ‘worth’ goes more to whether or not the proposed program will enable revolutionary change,” Walker replied.

Lewis, who has been at the receiving end of some strange research proposals, agrees that it’s not the subject per se that defines something as crazy, but the approach to it. “I have my own litmus test,” he says. “First, does this violate the laws of physics? That’s the gatekeeper.” Second, he says, is “what is the capability that it brings to bear, and is that an important capability?” By Lewis’s criteria, some ideas that seem wild are worthwhile to fund initially—as long as sponsors are willing to drop concepts that don’t appear to be living up to their promise. “For me, the difference is that the hafnium bomb violated the laws of physics, and we had lots of really smart people who said it violated the laws of physics,” he says. “Making the initial investment, one might argue, isn’t so bad,” he continues. “It’s knowing when to bail.”

Warriors and War Machines

Tanks and missiles are the most obvious fruits of military research, but some defense analysts argue that information technology is the weapon that has most revolutionized warfare. Modern generals never face the command and control problems that plagued, say, Napoleon. Surveillance technologies like radar and spy satellites can warn of an approaching enemy, troops can be given orders in real time from thousands of miles away, and GPS navigation ensures they don’t get lost. These technologies allowed the U.S. military to sweep aside initial opposition in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Philip Coyle, senior adviser for the Center for Defense Information and the Defense Department’s top technology tester during the Clinton administration, in recent years the Pentagon has increasingly relied on information. “Basically, you substitute electrons for armor,” he says. “The idea was if you had enough information, that would make up for armor.”

Research in advanced information technology is feeding ideas like Future Combat Systems, the Army’s ambitious $200 billion program to field a series of manned and unmanned vehicles linked by a common communications network. But Coyle now believes relying on information technology so heavily is at least partially misguided. He notes the lesson learned from the later combat in Iraq—where homemade bombs have proved deadly to U.S. forces—is simple: “You never have enough information to substitute for armor.”

That’s not the only problem. Building that heavily linked network has proved daunting. Costs have grown, particularly as engineers realized the limitations of their technology. Thomas Killion, the Army’s chief scientist, defends this work in much the same way Lewis defends the Air Force’s high-risk ventures: The important thing about Future Combat Systems was that the Army defined “a vision and stuck to it [and then over time] calibrated it with technical reality.”

In fact, the Pentagon is now extending its desire to manage information all the way to a soldier’s brain, where DARPA and other research agencies are seeking to exploit neuroscience in pursuit of better battlefield technology. This year DARPA started a project called the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System—more catchily dubbed Luke’s Binoculars (a reference to Luke Skywalker from Star Wars)—that combines advanced optics with an EEG system that monitors brain wave activity in the prefrontal cortex. Certain patterns of activity suggest that the brain has subconsciously detected a threat, and the system will alert the soldier immediately instead of waiting for his conscious mind to finish digesting the entire scene. DARPA anticipates field-testing a prototype in 2010.

Luke’s Binoculars is only one step into the world of neuroscience. The Pentagon is also trying to expand its understanding of the brain in order to detect foes. In an interview, William Schneider, the chairman of the Defense Science Board, a panel that advises the Pentagon’s senior leadership, says that neuroscience can offer a window into the minds of terrorists. “By being able to collect and process a lot of information about individuals that can be leveraged with understanding how the brain operates, there may be things we can do that had not heretofore been possible.” This would include being better able to predict where an individual might be found or to anticipate his behavior.

Schneider’s suggestion is one part of a broader report by the Defense Science Board on 21st-century “strategic technology vectors.” Released earlier this year, the report highlighted “human terrain preparation” as one of the key areas for Pentagon science and technology. This new piece of jargon has rapidly entered the military lexicon, with commanders and technologists alike talking about the “human terrain” to describe the interaction of culture, groups, and people that can, for example, lead to military forces being treated either as liberators or as unwelcome intruders.

The Pentagon does not just want to study this problem, however; it wants to develop a system to combat it. How can it manipulate group psychology so that insurgents, not U.S. forces, are seen by local civilians as the enemy? What interrogation techniques will produce the best results without alienating the local population or international allies? The sorts of technologies this might draw upon are diverse, Schneider says: everything from sensors that monitor the activity of people to software that would guide the actions of military commanders in the field by taking social and psychological factors into account. The Pentagon is funding social scientists to develop “a tool kit that helps combat teams understand the cultural context in which they must operate.” This kit might include handheld devices that will cue soldiers to behave in a culturally attuned manner.

According to Rear Admiral Bill Landay, who heads the Office of Naval Research, the question for this new area of research is: “How do you pick out unusual activity out of a very long, broad view of things you see? We’re putting a lot of emphasis in decision tools that focus on patterns and pattern differentiation, anomalies in behavior of people, the behavior of crowds, the behavior of organizations.”

The Pentagon’s vision of the future harks back to the past. During the Vietnam War, the Defense Department tried to use social sciences—particularly anthropology—in the service of national security. Though the most infamous of these efforts, called Project Camelot, focused on preventing insurgency in Latin America, other projects looked more broadly at using social sciences to help guide military actions, and like current efforts, they included quantitative and predictive uses of social science models.

The current research has resurrected some of this social science work. DARPA’s Integrated Crisis Early Warning System is nearly identical—at least in name—to a DARPA project of some 30 years ago that sought to forecast political instability. The current work describes “state-of-the-art computational modeling capabilities that can monitor, assess, and forecast, in near real time, a variety of phenomena associated with country instability.” The Defense Threat Reduction Agency has also joined in this pursuit, with research focused on tracking WMD networks. The Army, Navy, and Air Force (as well as the Department of Homeland Security) have all launched programs aimed at predicting group behavior. The goal, which one early participant called the “widgetization of social science,” was perhaps best summed up in 2005 by Starnes Walker, then the Office of Naval Research’s chief scientist, who said he wanted a Star Trek–like detector that could scan for evil intent.

Is this kind of analysis and manipulation possible? A memoir by one Pentagon official closely linked to the Vietnam-era cultural research concluded that the military should avoid funding social science. His warning has been forgotten: Human terrain research is growing, with the Pentagon estimating that in the 2006 and 2007 financial years, $74 million was allocated in this area.

Longtime national security analyst William M. Arkin is skeptical of much of the human terrain work, calling it a “dream counterterrorism program” that seeks to create a silver bullet to solve the problem of terrorism. “Those technologies are interesting and worthy of pursuit, but my guess is that they are a poor replacement for examining why it is that terrorism exists in the first place,” Arkin says. He points to the billions of dollars being poured into developing a biometric database in Iraq that will be used to identify and track individuals. This sort of approach, he says, is based on “the belief that they can make a database of the entire planet, and thereby that will set us free.” But he cautions that “9/11 was successful because it was a diabolical plot using the most conventional of weapons. It was not successful because of some technology they acquired.”

Human terrain research goes to the heart of the question of whether defense research is grounded in good science, or good policy. Not everyone in the Pentagon is convinced. “I’m going to be very candid on this one,” says Lewis, while noting that the Air Force Office of Scientific Research is funding work in this area. “I think it’s something we should be looking at. I’m also maintaining a healthy skepticism.” Ironically, Lewis’s skepticism is inspired in part by the science fiction of Isaac Asimov, whose Foundation novels center on researchers who use advanced social science to predict the future, based on the behavior of large groups. “There’s two important lessons that I think Asimov got right,” Lewis says. First, the technology failed when a dictator arose, creating a “wild card that throws all the predictions off.” Second, “in the end it turns out [the forecasters] were cheating. They hadn’t actually predicted it all in the past, they were broadcasting it live and updating their predictions.”

Lewis shrugs. “We couldn’t figure out if Ohio was going to go Democratic or Republican, and that’s the society we’re supposed to understand?”

For Arkin, the Pentagon’s emphasis on futuristic science runs smack against the reality that no amount of science and technology can solve the problems of today. “Our future security is not going to be created by a force field,” he says.

http://christianactionnetwork.wordpress.co...-human-terrain/

WOW! It sounds to good to be true, but this XOS robotic exoskeleton is the real thing and hopefully it might reach mass production sooner than later for more practical use. :wow:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7351314.stm

Most military programs don’t coordinate news releases with major motion pictures. With Iron Man in theaters and getting reviews that may get DID’s staff to go see it, Raytheon is taking the time to promote its US Army-funded exoskeleton suit. Originally funded under a 7-year, $75 million DARPA program, the suite has now gone on to the next stage under a 2-year, $10 million follow-on Army grant.
The problem they’re trying to address is no stunt. The weight of a soldier’s equipment easily approaches 80-100 pounds, far higher than the 30 pounds recommended for maximum mobility. As we load our soldiers down with more technical gadgets, that weight tends to go up, not down. The USA and Japan are only a couple of the countries working on aspects of a mechanical exoskeleton that would give its wearers vastly improved strength and endurance. While Japanese demographic and cultural trends in particular are giving concepts like individual soldier augmentation a push, we can still expect a very long wait before we see exoskeletons that can deliver the required performance to justify their cost, can handle military conditions, and can be maintained in the field at reasonable cost. It’s far more likely that first fielding, if there is one, will involve more limited use by disabled soldiers, or be used like Cyberdyne Japan’s HAL-5 in private, para-public, and first responder roles. Raytheon release | Raytheon feature | Popular Science [PDF].

Watch exoskeletons video here:
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/I-Am-Iron-Man-04877/

The pre-Star Wars proto-Storm Trooper? :armyeek:

Army's 'Future Soldier 2030' Equipped With Super-Human Technology



Sunday, May 24, 2009

It's the year 2030. As a soldier enters a crowded marketplace, sensors mounted on his helmet automatically scan faces in the crowd, identifying a known insurgent; a cursor in the heads-up display highlights the target and cues the weapon, which can be set to stun or kill; a simple voice command unlocks the trigger.

Aided by "smart drugs," enhanced with prosthetics, and protected by a lightweight suit of armor, this soldier of the future possesses near super-human capabilities and weapons that would make even Iron Man jealous. He's suited up in an "exoskeleton" - essentially a Storm Trooper-esque external shell - that allows him to carry heavy loads. Electronics integrated in his outfit allow for simultaneous language translation, automatic identification of potential foes, and video-game-like targeting. If the soldier is tired, overworked, or injured, neural and physiological sensors automatically send an alert to headquarters.

It's all part of the Army's starry-eyed vision of grunts 20 years from now, and it's just one aspect of the Pentagon's ambitious thinking about technologies that will transform the way the military fights. There are also plans for advanced robotic aircraft; missiles that travel seven times the speed of sound; and ship- and aircraft-based laser weapons that could blast missiles out of the sky.

These aren't fantasy. Many of these technologies are plausible, or in development. Whether the military can afford them is an entirely different question.

Each branch of the military has its own plans, but the Army concept of tomorrow's soldier borrows heavily from nearly every genre of science fiction. Dubbed "Future Soldier 2030," the vision is the brainchild of the Natick Soldier Systems Center in Massachusetts, an Army organization responsible for researching and developing new technologies for the individual fighter.

source..

By then, the Philippine Army will finally match the US Army's 2000's-era capability. We're always 30 years behind. :specool:

But its still a human inside that high tech suit, the first country to deploy true robot soldiers will be the most powerful country in the world.

^^

and that will be us...MAPUA engineers will invent the first true combat-capable humanoid robot in 2025 :armycheers:

Who knows our brilliant MAPUA engineers are working on it now. We can probably field the LapuLapu Mk. I robot soldier earlier than 2025. :drunk:

They have my SUPPORT on that!.. :thumb:

sana ganyan dpat hindi nakikita yung mukha mas cool :specool:

hindi nman kailangan eksakto pero maganda talaga kpag hindi na nakikita yung mukha diba?
actually its a lot safer too..for the soldiers...tignan niyo ung sa weapon and....something nakalimutan ko ung pangalan e.basta nandun :specool:

lagot ka sa mods! :banana:

The only major problem I see with this "exoskeleton" system is power. Where will this exoskeleton get all its electricity unless naka-plug ito sa outlet? Commercial batteries will not be able to give enough juice.

Unless, of course, the Pentagon has made really dramatic breakthroughs with battery technology.

Its going to be a scaled down fuel cell that will power that future exoskeleton. The Pentagon is currently developing various fuel cell formats with the ultimate goal of producing reliable micro fuel cells to power various future weaponry.

Whoever develops a fuel-cell small enough to be carried around but producing enough power to drive the exoskeleton will make a huge fortune. Baka dadaigin pa niya si Bill Gates!

Which is more achievable, the US future Soldier in 2030 but or the Droid Army in 2020?

US Army To Be 30 Percent Droid By 2020?

The U.S. military may be 30 percent robotic by the year 2020 according to Doug Few and Bill Smart of Washington University in St. Louis.

"When the military says 'robot' they mean everything from self-driving trucks up to what you would conventionally think of as a robot. You would more accurately call them autonomous systems rather than robots," says Smart, assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

At present, all of the US Army's robots are teleoperated. Current military policy is to leave human beings "in the loop" for important decision-making.

"It's a chain of command thing. You don't want to give autonomy to a weapons delivery system. You want to have a human hit the button. You don't want the robot to make the wrong decision. You want to have a human to make all of the important decisions," says Smart.

In the more distant future, though, who knows? There has been a considerable amount of development in the area of autonomous vehicles; see this article on the MULE Autonomous Navigation Vehicle By Lockheed Martin for an example.

Also, autonomous robots with the ability to open fire upon their own initiative are under development in other countries.

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fict...sp?NewsNum=1806

oh no.this will be the start of the terminator (movie) haha,hopefully not,haha,no i'm serious.

Kudos, Cheers and Peace Out :armycheers: ...

^^^^

Thats the best airsoft outfit I've seen so far... :banana:

This one is the Felin for the French Forces






Kudos, Cheers and Peace Out :armycheers: ...

This one is the IdZ (Infanterist der Zukunft) of the German Forces :pistols: ...



Kudos, Cheers and Peace Out :armycheers: ...

no,that will not be looks of a soldier in 2030,those guys in the pages 1 or 2 are the right ones,a helmet that covers your face,much safer too.

^^ I know, I'm just impressed by the concepts of other NATO Countries :armycheers: even though it is not for the year 2030...