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Ares
Clan Jade Falcon
Star Colonel
Joined: 20-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 737
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 Posted: 01-Jun-2003 21:20 Post subject: The Future Face of Warfare |
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http://www.rednova.com/news/stories/3/2003/06/01/story001.html
Kind of scary, seeing human faces turned into Master Chief lookalikes. Still though, some good stuff, which unsuprisingly Clancy has damn-near exactly fictionally invented some 5 years ago with his "Net Force" series of books.
The suit seems pretty nice, but kind of porked-out for $15 billion. I'd want some way to turn off most of the non-essential HUD info, maybe like a selector switch for "nav" "combat" "recon" or something. Lot of nice visual-enhancements on it. I'm guessing it's all run that impactproofed backpack-CPU they're deveolping, and I'd sure as hell want some battery life on that thing. Lowest bidder made though....I'm not sure if I'd want the pressure cuffs or whatnot they built into the suit for the torniquete system trigged remotely. Nice ideas though for other med systems, reminds me a little of Deus Ex. Nanotech is some fun stuff. Hopefully they make it comfortable, too: the one thing I hear from all the infantry vets in my family (quite a few, including a Green Beret sniper stationed in Bosnia for 5 years) is that marching the last ten kilometers with your backpack chafing your underarms or thighs is the most distracting thing possible. Hopefully, they realize EMP would possible rape the hell out of this thing as well, if it was set off: I know it's kind of hard to suddenly EMP a group of soldiers, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to be losing circulation to half my body, registered as dead to some Intel officer, or getting bad information from the Sat Uplink.
I'm suprised at the weapon design, I was hoping a round with a little more kick than the 5.56x45 would make itself present if we decided not to use the "OICW" M29. 7.62x51 NATO's may be a little too recoil intensive, and I'm unsure of the performance of 7.62x39 Russian. All I know is that if I'm in the field, I wanna put the other guy on his ass with a steel-on-target chest round, and not lance right through him 4 or 5 times like a 5.56 has reportedly done so. That's what makes the short ranged stopping power of a nice, blunt handgun round so loved by me. 10x25 Norma and .45 ACP are great for that, although I'd guess the 9mm M9's the army fields now are a little more finessed and usuable for the situation of GI John Doe. At least that nice 40mm grenade launcher is still there, and hopefully detachable without taking away most of the computerized optics of the gun (as far as I know, the OICW has all the advanced targeting electronics slaved into the launcher - Wanna drop three pounds of weight? All right, but you just lost rangefinder/laser designator, ect). Hopefully they can make those targeting functons reliable visble on the HUD somehow.
Altogether, the major problem I see with it is reliability, availability, and cutting through most of the political shit (JSF, anyone? No one will touch it, too much already invested) to make something worthwhile and valued to the basic infantryman.
I'm probaly missing a whole lot of stuff I'm going to think of later, but that's most of it. Any opinions?
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Nightmare
Lyran Alliance
Kommandant-General
Joined: 03-May-2002 00:00
Posts: 2214
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| Posted: 02-Jun-2003 08:01 Post subject: RE: The Future Face of Warfare |
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IIRC that XM29 is the OICW, just with some newer military designation. 5.56 ammo and airburst grenades, computerized sights.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/oicw.htm
Don't know where it will lead yet, they haven't even finished the Land Warrior project properly! That one was supposed to be introduced 2001 through 2014, for only 45,000 soldiers total. Hmm, the improved version was to be ready 2003...
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/land-warrior.htm
We'll just have to wait and see. Getting that stuff to function requires a lot of hard work. What will soldiers say when they run out of batteries in the middle of the woods? No radio, no GPS, no night vision or laser-guided bombs 
Even worse if the helmet shuts down in combat 
Just carry around something with batteries in the winter and you'll understand. No matter how super-hot the batteries are you will notice them draining at ridiculous rates. This system requires a new generation of support functions.
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A tree fall in the forest, and no one is around, and it hits a mime. Does anyone care?
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Paul
Capellan Confederation
Sang-wei
Joined: 25-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 255
Location: United States
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| Posted: 10-Jun-2003 18:43 Post subject: RE: The Future Face of Warfare |
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Quote:
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Then comes a uniform with built-in tourniquets that one day might be tightened and loosened remotely.
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(from the article)
Remotely? I hope they have that system hacker proof. Talk about taking out infantry regiments with a keystroke.
As for the battery problem, I guess they'd better train the soldiers to work without all that gear. Most of the stuff enhances functions, it doesn't replace them.
If a BT BA runs out of power, you're in deep doodoo.
If something like this system runs out, it sucks, but you're not in too deep crap. For long operations, you could even elect to shut down most functions safe for your squad or even platoon leaders. Then swap batteries around.
Or bring an extra APC that's carrying spare batteries. 
Paul
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