MIDNIGHT on the battlefield. In the remnants of a burnt-out village, a
soldier in full battledress picks his way quietly through the rubble. But this
is no ordinary soldier. He is one of a new generation of warriors and he is
carrying a remarkable weapon.
Sensing danger he ducks behind a wall and from the brim of his helmet flips
down a tiny camera attached to a display screen the size of a jeweller鈥檚 loupe
which hang a few centimetres in front of his left eye. This is a night vision
aid that intensifies the light from the moon and stars to produce daylight-type
images of the surrounding area. Immediately, the dark road comes alive with the
ghostly images of the members of his squad. Further down the road, however, the
view is obscured by smoke from the burning vehicle.
But this is no problem. The screen is also connected to a computer on his
back which the soldier can operate using a small touchpad on his chest. With a
flick of his wrist, he instructs the computer to display video images from a
thermal sensor mounted on his rifle. Thermal sensors pick up body heat, or
far-infrared light, which passes unscathed through smoke and haze. It should
reveal if any enemy soldiers are lying in wait.
Advertisement
From his protected position behind the wall, he holds the rifle at arm鈥檚
length and points it round the wall and up the road. On his screen, the dark
road becomes a bright scene that reveals the crouched outline of an enemy sniper
in the distance, beyond the smoking vehicle. Using his laser rangefinder and
compass, and a radio built into his backpack, he relays the sniper鈥檚 location to
his platoon leader 1 kilometre away in camp.
Then, still out of sight behind the building, the soldier takes aim and
squeezes the trigger . . .
A weapon that ten years ago would not have looked out of place in a
futuristic action movie is about to become standard issue for the US Army. The
soldier鈥檚 weapon is the Land Warrior鈥攁 conventional M16 rifle fitted with
an array of sensing and intelligence-gathering equipment鈥攁nd it will
be field-tested by infantrymen on training grounds in the US later this
year.
Electronic warriors
鈥淚n recent years, there has been an explosion in computer capability,鈥� says
Marc Collins, the assistant manager of the Land Warrior project and a major in
the US Army Corps of Engineers at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. 鈥淐omputers have
shrunk to the point where we can now incorporate those capabilities on a
蝉辞濒诲颈别谤.鈥�
The US Army has made the most of it. On a metal band round the rifle barrel,
engineers have mounted a thermal camera, an infrared laser rangefinder and
digital compass telling the soldier how far away, at what elevation, and in
precisely which direction his target lies, and even a conventional rifle scope.
All the images and data reach the soldier鈥檚 display via a cable connecting the
rifle to a computer carried on his back.
He has access to other information, too. The computer can call up a
topographic map of the surrounding terrain from its memory and overlay it with
images of buildings as well as friendly and enemy positions relayed by radio
from headquarters or other soldiers. Similarly, the images from his sensors can
be broadcast to other members of his platoon.
Considering the potential advantages of the Land Warrior, it has been
surprisingly cheap to develop. Most of the components were what the military
call COTS, or 鈥渃ommercial off-the-shelf鈥�: they had already been developed for
other uses. 鈥淲e looked around at all the things that were available to us and
saw that the work had been done and the tools were there,鈥� Collins recalls. 鈥淲e
took what we needed, adjusted it and used it.鈥�
Those adjustments were largely a matter of redesigning circuits to fit into
smaller spaces or unique shapes. For example, the computer chips and cards are
commercially available, but had to be reconfigured to fit inside a plastic frame
that can double as the frame of a field pack. The infrared sight, rangefinder
and compass existed in other military hardware, but had to be shrunk to fit on a
rifle. Head-mounted computer screens, which recreate the visual detail and
impact of a full-size monitor, are used routinely in industry.
To reshape the components, the US Army enlisted the Hughes Aircraft Company,
a long-established defence contractor. Hughes has been producing prototypes
since January and is about to begin trials of the new weapon. 鈥淐ommercially
available technology isn鈥檛 necessarily able to survive the extreme conditions
that soldiers encounter in combat,鈥� says Julius Bogdanowicz, a computer engineer
and deputy programme director for Land Warrior at Hughes. 鈥淪pecifically, there
are three challenges you face any time you build anything for the
military鈥濃�攕hock, weight, and power.
The concussion generated by a bullet firing inside a weapon is relatively
small, he says, but with repeated firing 鈥渋t can shake the fillings out of your
teeth鈥濃�攐r shake the components out of an electronic circuit. To combat the
repeated pounding that the delicate parts must endure, military engineers use
rugged electronic components joined not by solder but by interlocking connectors
that snap tightly together.
In battle, 鈥渨eight鈥� is another word for 鈥渨eariness鈥�. A fully loaded M16 rifle
weighs about 4 kilograms. The Land Warrior鈥檚 thermal sight adds another
kilogram, and each additional component adds at least half a kilogram. 鈥淚n the
commercial world, it鈥檚 often easier to add a few components than to take the
time and trouble to engineer smaller devices,鈥� Bogdanowicz notes. 鈥淏ut we looked
at the electronics to figure out which functions are common to more than one and
then, where we could, created one circuit to use for both.鈥� That reduces weight,
size and cost.
That said, the designers built a certain amount of redundancy or 鈥渇ault
tolerance鈥� into the electronics to ensure that if one component fails it would
not disable all the intelligence systems at once.
The rifle鈥檚 sensors are also detachable. 鈥淚t鈥檚 mix and match,鈥� Bogdanowicz
says. 鈥淣ot every soldier will carry every attachment all the time.鈥� A soldier
doesn鈥檛 usually need a laser aiming sight in daylight, for example, and not
every soldier needs to broadcast video. 鈥淭he weapon can be configured to suit
the mission,鈥� Collins points out.
Of the three challenges, power is the most daunting. Today鈥檚 most
sophisticated portable batteries will power a notebook computer for perhaps four
hours. The US Army has specified that the energy cells in a Land Warrior must
last three times as long. 鈥淏atteries are a big deal,鈥� nods Bogdanowicz. 鈥淭hey
not only translate into weight but also, in the case of the Land Warrior, can
affect a soldier鈥檚 survivability.鈥�
To nurse them through their half-day shift, the Land Warrior鈥檚 lithium
sulphide batteries rely on a complex system of power management. 鈥淲e鈥檙e
controlling which devices can be used at the same time and how long each can be
on without being used,鈥� says Bogdanowicz. 鈥淲e鈥檝e also used lower-power circuits
and commercial technology that allows parts of individual chips to be turned off
if they鈥檙e not in use. It all adds up in power savings.鈥� The designers calculate
that, with judicious use of the components, the batteries will last a full 12
hours, but they鈥檒l only know for sure when the field trials are complete.
Information overload
One capability that cannot be engineered into the Land Warrior is the
soldier鈥檚 capacity to operate the different systems and deal with the data they
feed back. Some analysts suggest that the increase in the number of crashes of
US Navy fighter jets in recent years is a result of pilots failing to assimilate
and act on the bewildering flood of data that the plane throws at them. The army
is taking pains to avoid any similar trouble.
Unlike fighter pilots, who must keep an eye on the vast array of dials and
displays on their consoles, the infantry soldiers will only be able to monitor
one sensor at a time. In November, a squad of soldiers equipped with prototype
Land Warriors will start experiments at Fort Benning, Georgia, designed to
discover if the weapon can be operated effectively.
In any event, soldiers had better get used to it, says Collins. 鈥淭he world
changed when the Berlin Wall fell down,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he geography, environments
and missions soldiers will confront have become much less predictable. This
weapon is the army鈥檚 response to that unpredictability.鈥�