HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—There’s no such thing as a standard gear set-up from squad to squad in the Army, the chief of infantry said Tuesday, and none of it is designed to work together.
So the service finds itself in a place where a dismounted soldier can be walking around with more than 80 pounds of kit, including four or five radios that each do something different.
“In fact, we’ve been focusing our efforts on the individual soldier for so long we’ve burdened them with redundant capabilities developed in a stove pipe and added extra weight,” Brig. Gen. Phil Kiniery said at the AUSA Global Force symposium.
The way the service would like to approach procurement going forward, he said, is treating the squad as a system, an evolution of the Soldier-as-a-System concept going back almost 20 years. Rather than bogging down each individual with every device and piece of gear, there’s room to equip them as a unit.
“We must reduce weight and increase combat power. We must reduce the cognitive load and increase combat power. We must increase efficiency and increase combat power,” Kiniery said.
One place to start is with the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, which is like a night-vision goggle that can handle navigating, targeting, heat sensing and more all in one piece of equipment.
“It’s not just a night vision device, right? It’s a mission command solution,” said Maj. Gen. Chris Schneider, head of Program Executive Office Soldier.
The Army would really like to have a do-it-all radio, he said, but something that doesn’t require massive batteries and tons of cables to operate.
“Let’s just say you’ll get more money or you’ll be more competitive if your system isn’t a power hog,” he offered as a challenge to industry.
There’s also the next-generation squad weapon, whose 6.88 mm ammunition makes it heavier overall than its predecessor.
“We’re taking a whole bunch of feedback from soldiers, real time, to improve the balance and the weight of that weapon system,” Schneider said.
Kiniery imagines a system that tells the rifle where to shoot.
“Now a soldier doesn’t even have to raise his rifle up, or her rifle up, to their eye to aim and shoot something—we just now reduced cognitive load,” he said. “We’ve seen the target, now we’re shooting first.”
Or, instead of a drone with a remote that requires a soldier to put down their rifle to operate, something that uses voice-control instead.
“So every aspect of every system that a soldier has, we’re taking a hard look at every single one of them,” Schneider said. “So nothing will be safe, in that regard.”
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