The Army’s vision for its future soldiers could begin to materialize
this decade, under the Objective Force Warrior program. The technical challenges
ahead, however, are formidable.
The Objective Force Warrior, managed by the Soldier Systems Center in Natick,
Mass., aims to convert the foot soldier into an independent lethal weapon, by
integrating the various components of a soldier’s uniform and battlefield
equipment.
The U.S. Army already has been developing advanced soldier technologies under
the much-criticized Land Warrior program. In recent months, however, the Army
has restructured Land Warrior and intends to merge successful technologies into
Objective Force Warrior.
The Land Warrior Initial Capability—which was supposed to be fielded
for the Army Rangers in 2004—was changed to Land Warrior Stryker Interoperable,
to be fielded with the Stryker light armored vehicle brigades.
“I hope we either field this thing, or wish we had killed it,”
said Col. James Moran, the program executive officer for soldier systems. “Unfortunately,
last year we had a consortium of contractors, five contractors, but no one was
in charge. They weren’t under contract with each other. They were all
doing their own thing.” The Army re-competed the program and awarded General
Dynamics to integrate all the pieces, said Moran.
Now, the Army has selected another General Dynamics team, “Eagle Enterprise,”
as the lead technology integrator for Objective Force Warrior.
By 2006, the Army hopes it will have an OFW equipment set that weighs no more
than 40 pounds and can last for a 24-hour mission.
The plan is for the Soldier Systems Center to transfer the OFW to the PEO Soldier,
for the System Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase. The program will then
be called Land Warrior Advanced Capability.
The first Land Warrior Advanced Capability unit will be fielded with the first
increment of the Future Combat System, in 2010, according to Carol Fitzgerald,
the technology program manager for the Objective Force Warrior advanced concept
demonstration.
The FCS often is described as the Army’s network of manned and unmanned
ground and air vehicles. The OFW will be networked into the FCS systems, John
Munroe, the OFW chief engineer told National Defense.
The failures of the Land Warrior program will help the team avoid certain problem
areas in the OFW design.
“Our office has been involved in Land Warrior and tracked it throughout
its life,” Munroe said in an interview. “We understand the critical
risk areas.”
For example, he said that power is one of the critical areas, “trying
to make sure that any technology that we bring has to earn its way into the
system. We have to see what kind of power demands it has as well as weight.”
To make sure that the technology is sturdy enough to be fielded, the Army is
setting “maturity gates,” as measuring tools, said Fitzgerald. “You
can’t move the technology if it is not ready.”
It is not hard to see why Land Warrior has run into trouble, said John Northrop, a technical consultant who works
with the General Dynamics Eagle Enterprise team. “The problems ... have
been driven by two things—one, a very hard task and two, trying to do
too much within the resources and capabilities that they have,” he said
in an interview at a recent conference of the National Defense Industrial Association’s
Armaments Division.
The Eagle team is starting with a clean sheet of paper, he said.
“The goal for us is to effectively merge available technologies ... but
we are keeping a vision on what is going to happen on about six to 10 years
from now.”
Any weight reduction and power management schemes developed during Phase II of the OFW will be applied to Land Warrior.
Program Details
Eagle Enterprise received a $141 million contract for Phase II and III of OFW.
The 25-month Phase II—with a price tag of $100 million—will refine
the system and subsystem design through four spirals, which will lead to a detailed
design package and two prototype systems for Phase III. Phase II also includes
a preliminary design review.
During Phase III, which will go on for 15 months and is worth $41 million,
the lead integrator will produce equipment needed for a squad-size demonstration
with a platoon link, said Munroe.
According to a General Dynamics presentation, the team could be asked to make
50 advanced prototype systems, depending on the funding available.
The Eagle team beat Exponent Inc. after an eight-month Phase I competition.
“There were very comprehensive proposals for this program, thousands of
pages,” said Munroe.
The award criteria were the technical and management approach, he said. Unlike
General Dynamics, Exponent “does not have any experience managing programs
like these,” said Munroe.
“We obviously reviewed the past performance and the cost proposal,”
he added. The Eagle team was the one who proposed $141 million for Phase II
and III. According to Munroe, Phase III will be re-priced. “The Eagle
team provided us with a better balance of risk and technology advancement.”
The Eagle team is made up of 21 companies, ranging from sensor technology to
communications providers, said Northrop.
General Dynamics will also select subcontractors for the OFW task, he said.
“Exactly how we introduce our concepts to industry is to be determined.”
General Dynamics, at the Army’s request, will take some of the outstanding
concepts from their OFW competitors.
The Army does not have a clear set of requirements, said Munroe, because requirements
are difficult to change. “We try to bring these systems and technologies
together in a flexible environment,” he said.
“There is a science to connecting cables, and there is an art to determining
the balance of what is technologically feasible within the funding straits that
we have,” Northrop said. “I would not expect the government to give
us hard requirements,” he said. “I would not want that right now.
Industry wants a vision and then we begin the process of negotiation of what
is achievable within the time and costs available.”
He also noted that the team must incorporate lessons learned from Operations
Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.
Contractors recognize that, so far, it has not been possible to successfully
dismount soldiers from armored vehicles. “When you get off the truck,
you lose the communications,” Northrop said.
The system architecture is going to be the biggest headache, said Northrop.
General Dynamics will have to develop a system that would allow various systems
to interface and inter-operate. “We have to understand that they [soldiers]
have to interface not only with FCS forces, but with the current [legacy forces]
and coalition forces.”
The software architecture that manages information and information fusion is
“the really hard part,” he said.
The power requirements also are likely to pose problems. “All that soldier
equipment takes power,” Munroe said.
“We are working on operational concepts so that soldiers can refresh
their power when they get inside the [infantry carrier] vehicle. ... In OFW,
we are focusing on lightweight and low power.”
Among the OFW subsystems are personal display systems, individual computers,
laptops, computer notebooks, all “designed to help collaborative situational
awareness and information management,” said Northrop. “Merging all
that together is very hard.”
Lethal Weaponry
General Dynamics, in its proposal for OFW, envisioned the “strike team”
as the lowest maneuver element. “The strike team is the guts of the deal,”
Northrop told the NDIA Armaments conference.
The strike team is made up of four men. “The big reason we agreed with
a four-man team was the independent command and control,” said Northrop.
The strike team will have the command and control of the fire team, the capability
for direct and indirect fire suppression. The strike team also could provide
beyond line-of-sight support to an adjacent unit.
The strike teams will operate some sort of vehicle. In its proposal, the Eagle
team specified the Mule robotic vehicle, one of the staples of the Future Combat
System. The 2.5-ton Mule can be suitable for reconnaissance or transport/supply
missions. In the OFW, however, this vehicle could be both manned and unmanned,
said Northrop. “We think we can put four live fires on that and shove
it around the battlefield,” he said. “Few folks have to cover large
areas, so we have to think about how to do that.”
The strike team should be able to self-sustain for 24 hours and could stow
an additional 48 hours of supplies on a Mule-like vehicle, said Northrop.
The Eagle squad, which is the OFW’s combined arms formation, is made
up of three strike teams, a squad leader, a system’s squad leader and
a situational awareness and effects non-commissioned officer. The squad will
have the command and control of multiple strike teams.
“We think you need an advanced computing power that does not allow you
to distribute but receive a tremendous amount of information and services from
the headquarters,” said Northrop.
The squad’s organic indirect fires will be in the form of 60 mm and 81
mm mortars. The Mules would also have hand-held mortars, Northrop noted. “You
now begin to see a combined-arms organization at the lowest level,” he
said.
Multi-directional assault is a major reason why the GD team picked three teams
for a squad, he added. “You can take casualties, but you will still have
organizations that will provide fires to each other.”
The strike teams and the squad maneuver should, in fact, be enabled by beyond-line-of-sight
(BLOS) mutually supporting fires. OFW will not have a dedicated weapons squad
that would support the rest of the units.
“If you believe the concept of BLOS, mutual supporting fires and precision
engagement with an M-203 grenade launcher system, [then] the integration of
the precision mechanism and the tactical fire control that allows you to shoot
where you want to shoot... is a very important and complex thing,” said
Northrop.
Forces would need to be dispersed in order to cover a wide area. That is why
they have
to be organized in small teams. Those teams should have the capability to employ
BLOS mutually supporting fires and enhanced organic sensors. Teams also would
have to be able to attack in a speedy and timely manner.
While much of General Dynamic’s proposal relies on the presence of the
Mules, “the key philosophy is that at no time is the dismounted infantry
guy dependent on these systems,” said Northrop. “We can leverage
these systems, but we still have to understand that we have to have pure and
totally dismounted guys in the absence of these.”
The OFW will have connectivity with the Future Combat system, but it will also
work together with other systems, such as the RAH-66 Comanche, the Army’s
future scout helicopter.
“We will be able to inter-operate, share intelligence and common operating
pictures within the unit of action[in the FCS],” Munroe said. “We
are working on all the interfaces with FCS, like the infantry carrier vehicle.”
OFW soldiers will be able to recharge their power supplies from those vehicles
as well as the Mules.
Another important technology in OFW—being developed for the Joint Tactical
Radio System Cluster 5—will network the communications and intelligence
assets between soldiers. It is called the SLICE radio, short for Soldier Level
Integrated Communications Environment
The SLICE radio, developed by ITT Industries, uses advanced waveforms and a
power management system that enables dismounted soldiers to communicate at greater
ranges, explained Northrop. “The vision is for the SLICE radio to be fully
integrated into the OFW ensemble,” such as the back of the soldier’s
rear armor plate, said Northrop.
Another attribute of the SLICE radio is its ability to operate multiple channels
and use common protocols, “but yet be on different nets, so that they
do not interfere with each other,” said Northrop.
SLICE will be an embedded networking waveform radio, said Northrop, and the
development of the waveform is the hard part. From the Army’s perspective,
networking the SLICE radio will be one of the most critical and difficult pieces
of the program, said Munroe.