AI In Your Eye: Army Goggles Will ID Targets Automatically
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Army soldiers are testing goggles with an image-recognition system that can automatically spot threats like tanks and warn the rest of the squad — or transmit the target data to a distant missile battery so they can take it out.
Mattis’s Infantry Task Force: Righting ‘A Generational Wrong’
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Retired Maj. Gen. Bob Scales is the former commandant of the Army War College, a Vietnam veteran (and recipient of the Silver Star for valor) turned military historian and futurist. He’s also one of the fathers of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s Close Combat Lethality Task Force to reform the infantry. In this op-ed, Scales goes… Keep reading →
Grunts To Get High-Tech Targeting Goggles In 2019
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This kind of effort to get fighter-jock technology to ordinary grunts — who do most of the fighting and dying — has enjoyed some high-profile attention in the last 12 months. The efforts cover everything from developing a new, more powerful longer-range rifle to buying off-the-shelf quadcopters, from adding VR training simulations to eliminating tedious safety lectures.
Virtual Training Will Save Real Army Lives: Close Combat Task Force
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PENTAGON: Of all the technologies and tactics that the defense secretary’s Close Combat Lethality Task Force has looked at, I asked one battle-hardened noncom here this morning, what’s the one thing you personally think has the most potential to save lives? His answer wasn’t a bigger gun or a new drone. Instead, Sgt. Major Jason… Keep reading →
Stop Wasting Infantry’s Time: Mattis Task Force
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“All too often when we bring things up inside the Beltway, it immediately devolves to material and programs and technology,” said Scales. “What we hope comes out of this is not just new machines but new ways of thinking about warfare at the tactical level.”
Huntington-Ingalls Sinks $2B Into Shipyards: Digital Plans & Computerized Welding
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“Each of your crafts — electrical, pipefitting, pipe-welding, painting, your riggers… still require some human touch,” Kastner told me. “Digital tools… free the craftsman up a bit to not do the grunt work.”
HUD 3.0: Army To Test Augmented Reality For Infantry In 18 Months
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What should the device show the soldier? “Where am I? Where are my buddies? And where is the enemy?” said Gen. Townsend. “Then other stuff could be optional.”
Guns, Drones, & Augmented Reality: Army Seeks Infantry Revolution
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The catch, of course, is that the Army’s tried to field all these things before — and failed. Why would things go any better this time around? Brig. Gen. Christopher Donahue has an answer for that.
War Games: Army Replacing 1980s Simulators With Gaming Tech
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The first phase of the Synthetic Training Environment initiative replaces existing simulators for vehicles. The second phase aims to create — in just two years — something the Army’s never had before: an “immersive” virtual training environment for troops on foot.
Google Cars, Pokemon Go, & The Future Of War: Roper Interview Part II
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William Roper is “buying time” for the rest of the Pentagon, he told us in a rare interview. His Strategic Capabilities Office finds near-term but game-changing upgrades for existing weapons systems, preserving American advantage over rapidly advancing adversaries while DARPA and Defense Department labs develop a new generation of breakthroughs. Yesterday, we wrote about Roper’s… Keep reading →