U.S. Soldiers Hate New High-Tech Gear 619
mattnyc99 writes "Land Warrior, the Army's wireless equipment package featuring helmet cams, GPS, laser range-finders and a host of other state-of-the-art electronics, is finally ready for deployment on a global battlefield network in Iraq after 15 years of R&D at the Pentagon. But in a report for Popular Mechanics, Noah Shachtman not only tries on the new digital armor—he talks to troops who don't like it at all. As if that wasn't disheartening enough for the future of tech at war, the real Land Warrior system doesn't even match up to its copycat gear in Ghost Recon 2."
Re:Murphy's Laws of Combat (Score:3, Interesting)
20. Never forget that your weapon is made by little kids in China contracted by a subcontractor of the highest campaign contributer.
William Lind Article (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just Like The M16 (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, just check this [youtube.com] out and make your own conclusion...
Not Suprising (Score:4, Interesting)
It's change. No one likes drastic change. When we turn filing cabinets full of paperwork into databases, people complain, even though it is much faster, and should make their job much easier, they don't like it and complain that it makes everything more complicated. To the point where you make a dumbed down interface for it, they will still complain. After several months of being forced to use it, they start to love it. It just takes a while to get over change.
Although I'm not sure the same will apply with the Land Warrior System. It's more gear to lug around, and it adds more complexity and responsibility to individual soldiers, rather than making things simpler for them. But seeing how it can give them alot more info that will help them survive, I still think it will catch on fairly quickly.
War games vs. Video games (Score:5, Interesting)
People, including we tech people, should not fall for the siren song that is military technology. It is all advanced, "cool", state of the art but, no matter what is the justification (or rationalization), killing people is never beautiful, and, as opposed to video games, real people have families, sometimes are innocent and never respawn.
Now, when governments begin to create super-cool gadgets that actively save lives, it is something worth. Better body armor, a force shield, not getting involved with foreign countries for fun and profit, etc. And by "actively", I mean something different than saving lives by getting enemies to be identified and "neutralized" before they can act. Because, as most occupations in the past and present centuries shows, sometimes the simpler and less detectable device (be it a grenade bobby trap in the jungle or a roadside bomb on Iraq) can be the deadliest.
I was part of Landwarrior Development (Score:4, Interesting)
That being said, it's still pretty darn cool and I've met several soldiers who love it. It's not perfect and I think it still needs a generation of two before it's really combat ready. But the Striker Brigade that took them to Iraq is generally positive.
Re:money (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, they should be last resort
Heavier? No, thanks. (Score:4, Interesting)
No, no it's not. Heavier = bad. An infantryman can only carry so much shit around, and we've pretty much hit that maximum right now. Any weight you add in a personal weapon is going to have to be cut somewhere else, or else you're going to affect the speed and mobility (not to mention comfort) of the soldier carrying it around.
You're going to make a trade-off somewhere. If you can make the rifle lighter, speaking as someone who has carried one (along with an additional 75 pounds of crap), make it lighter. If I wanted to beat someone in the head with something, I'd use an entrenching tool, or some other more appropriately club-shaped and -weighted object. They're not exactly in short supply.
And I don't have any statistics, but I'll bet that the number of times that rifles are used as clubs in modern combat is pretty low. I don't think it's really an important design criterion. I think most soldiers would rather have the additional weight in ammunition, rather than just in simple mass that's only useful if the enemy is a few feet away.
Re:Just Like The M16 (Score:5, Interesting)
Col.David hackworth
From the soldier's mouth: (Score:5, Interesting)
The Armed Forces don't need all this gadetry. If they really want to attract the Nintendo generation soldiers we have these days (while getting, ahem, the most bang for their buck), they'll build Robotech style Mechs and a bunch of remote controlled dronebots and send them in to the slaughter. The days of the individual soldier are coming to an end. Too bad the "romance" of Point Du Hoc and Hamburger Hill combined with squad-based infantry tactics (everybody loved Saving Private Ryan, right? Right!) keeps the old men who run the whole thing from just accepting reality, getting an AOL account so they can see what the world is really like these days and cutting off the leeching defense contractors who take a million bucks to duct tape a thirty dollar Logitech webcam to the front of an outdated semi-automatic rifle. Iron Thunder.
Re:Just Like The M16 (Score:1, Interesting)
Yes, the two weapons have different calibers. That is actually another aspect of the AKs that make them superior. The 7.62 millimeter round is slightly larger and heavier than the 5.56 millimeter M-16 round, but this is good. The 7.62 millimeter round is the old "NATO" round from the Korean conflict. There's a LOT of ammunition floating around in that size. Try finding suitable quantities of 5.56 millimeter ammunition if you have an AR-16.
In summary, EVERYBODY wants an AK. Only collectors and guys out of the US military have any use for an M/AR-16.
Re:Just Like The M16 (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure - because you can buy the AK47 everybody can buy from his Uncle's cousin Oleg Gregorianovich and where he would not get the M16 from Uncle SAM.
Wrong. The AK47 uses a special "short" version of the 7.62, so you can NOT your your standard machinegun ammo like with the H&K G3. And every single one of the newer NATO-Country rifles (Steyr, Enfield, H&K) are using 5.65 now.16 POUNDS! (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to hump 70 kg (that's 150 pounds, boys and girls) as a combat FN C2 gunner in a combat engineer unit, and we were insane. In the heat, the kind of extra weight that 16 pounds adds is enough to get you killed.
That plus you're already in full record mode in battle, with too much info to figure out.
The only thing that even makes sense is a very light optical cam on the helmet (built-in) and mike, feeding in to a microradio and with a mini earpiece so you can hear (and promptly ignore) the CP orders that have zilch to do with the situation on the ground.
Some CQ REMFs must have thought this payload up, cause it's only going to get more of us killed and feather the retirement nests of the upper brass that have us in an unwinnable war.
Nuff said.
SNAFU.
Re:Just Like The M16 (Score:5, Interesting)
Much of the work to replace the weapon revolves around a minor change to the receiver. Making the combustion gases drive a piston that unlocks the bolt. Sealing the gases out of the relatively delicate internal goings on helps a lot, especially on full auto and burst fire weapons.
The other end of why people think the platform is unreliable is because the M4's rail foreend allows a person to defile an otherwise light and quick handling rifle by clamping lasers and lights and night vision and cameras and scopes and pinball machines to it. Now, instead of a properly balanced 8 lb rifle you have an 8 lb rifle with 30 lbs of gear hanging off the end of it.
Re:Just Like The M16 (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Get the basics right first (Score:5, Interesting)
I would take the situational awareness factor from the land-warrior system over better body armour and a more reliable rifle. Firstly, our rifles are already reliable, and secondly the plates in the body armour stops armour breaking rounds. The SA bonus from the land warrior system would be an extremely valuable asset.
From your comment I doubt that you have ever served in any armed force unit.
Wow. Just wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a classic example of badly conceived and designed IT implemented by indifferent lifer government contractors working off of ridiculous 2000-page requirement docs instead of, you know, what troopers actually need. They spend all their time on jamming in 800 features that will never be used, and let the fundamentals (battery life and system responsiveness) go to pot because they don't show up in the demos.
Map with location icons. Gun camera. Simple broadcast texting. That's all you need. Instead some clueless program manager decided it was critically important for a tactical rig to have all the features of his darling Outlook.
Oh, just wonderfull.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Makes me embarrassed.
Re:From the soldier's mouth: (Score:3, Interesting)
No offence, but if I want an opinion on combat tactics and equipment, I don't go asking network administrators. I'd come to you if my e-mail wasn't working, but otherwise....
Re:Just Like The M16 (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with that. But I think it is fair to say that the intent of the makers of the weapon was for it to be used in military assaults. The AK-47 and the M16 were made specifically for the armed forces of their countries and for export to the armed forces of other countries. So calling them assault rifles is justifiable. Just because a person doesn't want to use them in an assault doesn't mean they weren't made for that purpose. BTW I spent 5 years in the armed forces (infantry), and believe in the mission in Afghanistan. Iraq is another matter entirely... I back the troops 110% (they are allied brothers in arms). It doesn't mean I have to back the politics behind their deployment.
As a note, I find target shooting enjoyable, but don't own a weapon (I really have no need for one). I don't hunt, but don't have a problem with hunters... as long as they use as much of the animal they kill as possible. Just taking a head or the skin if B.S. if you ask me. It's also OK if there is a need to manage populations that might be getting out of control due to man's influence. As a matter of fact, I think it is probably a good thing for all meat eaters to either go hunting at least once (where a kill is made), or work at an abattoir for a day. I think that people are too disconnected from reality of where our food comes from and that *really* understanding that we eat other (formerly) living things makes us a bit more human. Just my view... and I used to maintain the computer systems at a place that killed 3500 head of cattle per day for about a year. I still eat meat!
The M-16/M4 vs AK-47/74 pissing contest... (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the high tech crap is just one more thing that breaks when it counts though.
Re:The M-16/M4 vs AK-47/74 pissing contest... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:16 POUNDS! (Score:3, Interesting)
Your microcam/mike/earpiece setup idea is bang on. Ten years ago (ten years!) when I was in, a few arty batteries tried the microradio thing. They picked up a bunch of cheap-ass headset radios from Radio Shack, and used it for passing bearings, communicating during firefights...all the kind of stuff we'd usually be yelling back and forth for. The things weren't high-tech, weren't encrypted, in fact they weren't even waterproof as shipped, but almost everybody still thought they were the best things since sliced bread. They weighed next to nothing, were easy to use, and didn't require taking your hands or eyes off anything. That's what you call "appropriate technology".
I've used this: you're wrong. (Score:4, Interesting)
I have also used the Land Warrior system. It just plain sucks. You can see some of my other posts in this topic if you want more detail but the short list is: it's too heavy, it's unreliable, it attaches your weapon to you, it's WAY too complicated for the average soldier (it's too complicated for me, and I run OpenBSD on my home system, imagine what it's like for the guy whose only email account is his AKO and he has only accessed it once when someone walked him through it), and it distracts you from the things that will get you killed.
I'm not your regular technophobe soldier, but I want a piece of gear that I know will work and won't distract me from the fight.
This isn't just bitching about new gear; this is stuff that will sit at the back of the supply cage and be brought out only for command inventory.
Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Interesting)
The winners are the bastards who manufacture weapons. Everybody else loses. For all these reasons, I think a clause in the GPL oughta be added.