LandWarrior Wearable Electronics To Finally Be Deployed

This LandWarrior thing has seemed, until now, mostly in the business of producing footage for the History and Learning Channels.

Some of the wearable electronics developed by the program are now to be deployed, though:

These days, the vasy majority of dismounted soldiers don't even have radios -- let alone the electronic mapping and messaging tools that have become commonplace in most Humvees. That'll change, once the "Manchus" of the 4/9 Infantry don the Land Warrior ensemble.

Radios and GPS locators come standard. A helmet-mounted monocle lets the soldier know he and his buddies are on a satellite-powered map. That same monocle is connected to the weapon sight, so the infantryman can, in effect, shoot around corners.

By which they mean you can stand protected behind a corner and stick your gun around it, using the gun's electronic sight to aim it, via your helmet monocle.

That's pretty good-- shooting with some accuracy without exposing yourself to enemy fire.

The sight also serves as a long-range zoom, with twelve times amplification. "It makes every rifleman a marksman," Colonel Richard Hansen, Land Warrior's project manager, crows. Night vision, and laser targeting – which once required clunky binoculars, or attachments to the gun -- are now built in, too.

posted by Ace at 03:26 PM

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