Enhancing the Survivability of the 21st-Century Land Warrior

by Lieutenant Commander Tony Davidson, Royal Australian Navy

The lethality of the man-portable weapon systems under development today and foreseen for the 21st century demands that complementary soldier systems be designed and fielded to take advantage of the increased capabilities. Research on the survivability of the 21st-century land warrior should result in a balance of protection versus mobility. Mobility contributes to survivability on the battlefield, just as it does to defeating the enemy. Individual mobility will allow soldiers to apply their firepower where and when required.

A popular saying in the armed forces of many countries is that their most important asset is their people. The value of soldiers is reflected in their pay and allowances and the quality of housing available to them. But their value also must be recognized by providing them the best protective clothing and equipment money can buy to ensure their survivability on the battlefield. The value of the soldier on the battlefield will increase rapidly as his lethality increases. The loss of a single American soldier will be a significant loss of available firepower. In addition, it will mean a significant investment in training to equip another soldier to take his place on the battlefield.

Situational Awareness

The 21st-century land warrior will have an enhanced level of situational awareness and superior individual and squad mobility. He will depend on compact and toughened digital technology to survive the rigors of the battlefield. This digital technology will provide him with secure communications, a video imaging link within the unit and up to the next level of command, enhanced helmet-mounted image intensification for target recognition and acquisition, and a target designation and hand-off capability for calling in indirect fire.

The key to this ensemble will be a battlefield-hardened, miniature computer that will provide the soldier, his squad, and section leaders with a digitized image of the battlefield. This image will provide terrain and force disposition data, both friendly and adversarial, and a real-time image of the developing battlefield. Battery technology will have advanced to a stage where the power requirements for this equipment will be contained within a D-sized, ultra-long-life battery. Development and integration of these technologies will take the Force XXI soldier into the realms of Army After Next. Further adaptations will be made as new and improved technologies are developed.

New-Generation Weaponry

The soldier of the 21st century will be equipped with a completely new generation of weaponry that significantly enhances the level of lethality already acquired by digitization. This weaponry may use electro or electro-thermal ammunition for compatibility with the Army After Next concept of a single power source on the battlefield. Individual combat weapons will weigh 10 pounds or less and will be integrated with the soldier's individual battlefield computer and helmet-mounted image intensifier that provide indirect fire information. These weapons will have the capability to disable the enemy in circumstances where maximum force is not required. When maximum force is required, they will have a bunker-bursting, anti-armor capability.

Embedded Diagnostics

The soldier on the battlefield of the future will be supported by a number of subsystems within his personal ensemble. These subsystems will include health-monitoring and diagnostic systems linked to the soldier's personal computer and digitally linked to his squad leader and combat medic. These systems will enable higher level commands to monitor the health status of units, withdrawing and replacing them when performance parameters are below optimum.

Sustainment

The 21st-century soldier will carry an enhanced water purification system with an advanced polymer filter that allows him to draw water from any source and use it immediately. Rations still will be provided in the traditional way if the combat situation allows. The concept of palatable energy tablets and nutrient patches will be studied to allow soldiers to embark upon prolonged periods of combat without having to carry the bulky rations necessary for sustainment. Tailored nutrition will be a concept introduced to the Army After Next, with specific rations and their calorific content matched to the expected activity of the soldier. Meals, ready to eat (MRE), will remain, but they will be refined to reduce the size, weight, and amount of packaging. The MRE's may be even more acceptable to the palate.

Streamlined Load

Regardless of the technological improvements and innovations that will be available to the 21st-century land warrior, he still will be required to carry some sort of load into battle. The load-bearing system of the future will need to adopt technologies similar to those adopted for the uniform the warrior wears, so the attributes of the uniform are not offset by the load-bearing system. The load-bearing system of the Army After Next soldier will afford easy access to equipment, be streamlined in design, be easily donned and taken off, and have sufficient capacity to carry the lightweight, high-tech accoutrements that will equip the warrior for survival. It will not limit the soldier's mobility.

Hazard-Resistant Uniform

The uniform that the soldier of the Army After Next wears into combat will be one piece, and it will cover his head, hands, and feet. It will conform to the soldier's physique and will contain a miniaturized climate-control system tailored to the metabolic rate of the individual soldier. It will contain biomedical sensors to gauge the health and well-being of the soldier, and it also will house external sensors to detect nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) contaminants. The fabric of the suit will be impenetrable to all known NBC hazards. The suit will be completely waterproof and will give the soldier the ability to breathe while completely submerged for a number of minutes.

The form-fitting suit, made of an advanced polymer, will afford ballistic protection from most calibers of small arms by instantaneously changing the molecular makeup of the suit to stiffen the immediate area of impact. This will be done by embedded micro-sensor actuators. Although the impact of a round cannot be mitigated entirely, the suit will not be penetrated. The suit will afford protection from shrapnel, but it will not reduce the effects of an artillery round or hits by other large-caliber weapons. The soldier will not be invincible, and a hit by a small-caliber round, while not fatal, may be partially incapacitating.

Detection Devices

Signature reduction will be a factor for the soldier of the 21st century as sophisticated detection devices are fielded. The soldier's advanced polymer suit will be made of radar-absorbent material and will prevent his detection by heat sensors. The soldier's overall ensemble will be designed for stealth and noiseless movement. Hearing and optical protection will be afforded by an acoustic-damping helmet, and a tinted faceplate will provide hearing and optical protection.

The Promise of Biotechnology

Does this vision of the 21st-century soldier sound like science fiction? Or is it within the realm of possibility? Only time and ongoing research will tell. Biotechnology is a rapidly developing field of scientific research that incorporates the characteristics and capabilities of living organisms in useful products. One of the primary military applications of biotechnology research has been in the field of advanced composite materials used in aerospace technologies. Applications to individual soldier systems likely will be an offshoot of this research, which is primarily looking at developing extremely strong yet lightweight materials.

There are three branches of biotechnology: biomimetics, bioprocessing, and biosynthesis. Biomimetics, or biological mimicking, is the study of naturally occurring systems so they can be duplicated to develop new designs and materials. The primary focus of biomimetics is to improve significantly the versatility and capabilities of synthetically produced materials and structures. Nature has an uncanny ability to produce, from relatively weak and unstable constituent materials, composite structures that combine the properties of toughness, strength, stiffness, minimal weight, and chemical resistance.

Bioprocessing converts biologically derived polymers into composite structures. For example, chitin, which forms the exoskeleton of an insect, could be used as the fiber component of a thermoplastic matrix composite of natural polymers. These biological polymers could be blended with synthetic polymers to benefit from their unique characteristics. Bioprocessing is the field that ultimately will blend all other biotechnologies into useable industrial products.

Biosynthesis is the process of genetically engineering natural compounds, especially protein polymers, that science so far has been unable to duplicate. By synthesizing nature, scientists hope to duplicate these natural polymers to take advantage of their remarkable qualities. One of the most remarkable natural polymers is silk and, in particular, spider silk.

As long ago as 1881, the tough and protective qualities of silk were recognized. That year, George Goodfellow, a physician in Tombstone, Arizona, recorded his observations following a fatal gunfight. When examining a penetrating wound to the deceased gunfighter's chest, he discovered that, after passing through his outer clothing, the bullet had impacted with and pushed through the flesh a folded silken handkerchief. The bullet was encased within the handkerchief, and not one layer of the handkerchief had been penetrated. Goodfellow recorded this observation and others in a document called Notes on the Impenetrability of Silk. Another incident he recorded was a case of a bullet actually deflected from a man's neck by a silk scarf.

The silk involved in these incidents and others recorded in Goodfellow's record was derived from the domesticated silkworm. For a number of years, scientists have been examining silk obtained from a number of other sources. Spiders produce a variety of silks for different purposes. Drag-line silk provides the framework for the spider's web and also enables a dangling spider to free-fall down to snare its prey. Drag-line silk is lighter and has proven itself in many ways superior to Kevlar, the strongest synthetic polymer. It is stronger than steel and has the ability to stretch and rebound from approximately 15 percent of its original length. The military applications for men and machinery are obvious. Scientists have embarked upon a program of research designed to produce spider silk in quantities suitable for use in domestic and military applications.

Will we see spider-silk-suited infantry soldiers in the Army After Next? It is a distinct possibility. The commercial possibilities of a material with the qualities of spider drag-line silk are limitless.

Smart Materials

Complementary to the work of biotechnologists is the research being conducted into "smart" technologies. Smart technology engineers the atoms or molecules of materials in such a way that the structure at the micro level is embedded with sensors, actuators, and control mechanisms. This allows the structure to sense and respond to external stimuli in a determinable and programmable way.

Advanced polymer research will allow the electrical and mechanical properties of advanced polymers to be altered when influenced by a specific stimulus. These smart technologies may have applications for the infantry soldier of the 21st century. Scientists visualize a photochromic ability (colors adjusting to match the surrounding spectrum) for advanced polymers. Some call it invisibility; perhaps ultra-low visibility is more accurate. The ability of an infantry soldier and his equipment to be nearly invisible has obvious advantages. Smart technologies also may provide advanced polymers with stress-sensitive molecules capable of monitoring damage and redistributing stresses, an appropriate quality for ballistic protection if it can be achieved instantaneously.

Robots

Worthy of consideration is a concept that has been discussed from time to time within the Air Force—replacing humans with robots. In the future, human-assisted platforms with onboard intelligence will be able to navigate terrain, observe enemy positions, and engage them when necessary. Systems will be monitored from stations far enough removed from the real battlefield that the danger to humans is almost totally removed.

Situational awareness could be maintained at a location remote from the battlefield while human-assisted platforms undertake the dangerous and deadly work on the battlefield. Only after the threat of the enemy has been effectively removed from the battlefield would the human warriors move in to hold the ground in concert with the robot troopers.

The argument against this proposal in Air Force circles generally has been that the situational awareness necessary to operate a high-performance aircraft and deliver precision-guided munitions can only come from a human in the cockpit. This belief may be true; however, digitizing the land warrior of the 21st century will provide him with a quantum leap in situational awareness that may take a generation of soldiering to embrace fully. Perhaps this is a vision for the "Army After the Army After Next."

Whatever the case, the question to ask is, "Will the Army After Next field a soldier similar to the one described above?" He ultimately may not look precisely the way I have described, and the smart technologies may not produce the advanced polymers needed to bring the land warrior's battlefield ensemble to fruition. However, the efforts of the Natick Research Laboratory and the Soldier Systems Command in Natick, Massachusetts, the lead exponents of enhanced survivability of soldiers on the battlefield, must continue to foster technological innovation and research by the nation's academic and research institutes in the field of soldier survivability. The U.S. Army must continue to push research endeavors to improve soldier survivability, recognizing that the soldier is still a valid and valuable component of the Army After Next. ALOG

Lieutenant Commander Tony Davidson currently is assigned in an logistics operations and plans position at Headquarters Australian Theater in Sydney, Australia. He is a graduate of the Royal Australian Naval College. He wrote this article in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation from the Army Logistics Management College's Logistics Executive Development Course.