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“FUNDAMENTAL AND STRATEGIC ABILITIES OF THE OBJECTIVE FORCE ARE HIGHLIGHTED TO INCLUDE THOSE CAPABILITIES THAT THE OBJECTIVE FORCE WILL PROVIDE THE JOINT FORCES COMMAND. THIS VIDEO WILL ALSO SHOW HOW THE FORCE WILL ADOPT TO THE CHALLENGES OF THE EMERGING OPERATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS OF THE FUTURE.”
NEW VERSION with improved video & sound:
Public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
Future Force Warrior is a United States military advanced technology demonstration project that is part of the Future Combat Systems project. The FFW project seeks to create a lightweight, fully integrated infantryman combat system. It is one technology demonstration project in a series of network-centric, next-generation infantry combat projects the U.S. military have developed over the past decade, such as the Soldier Integrated Protective Ensemble technology demonstration program, Land Warrior, and Transformation of the United States Army.
The Future Force Warrior concept envisions the radical use of technologies such as nanotechnology, powered exoskeletons, and magnetorheological fluid-based body armor to provide the infantry with significantly higher force multiplier than the opposing force. However, the stated concept is not U.S. Army doctrine, and is not intended to answer every situation that Army After Next (the Army’s buzzword for future fighting forces) would face; rather, the concept is meant to serve as an end goal to strive to reach or to compromise with current technologies and to stir imagination and dialogue on how these technologies and concepts can help soldiers in the near future.
The first phase of the project involves a development of the technologies to help reduce the soldier’s fighting load and power requirements and improving the soldier’s protection, lethality, and environmental and situational awareness, with planned deployment in 2010, to serve the Army’s short-term needs. The Army’s plan is to introduce the subsystems in “spirals” every two years, instead of one large rollout every ten years. The U.S. military hopes to develop a fully realized end product sometime in 2032, incorporating research from U.C. Berkeley’s BLEEX exoskeleton project and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies into a final design.
Nett Warrior
Net Warrior — named after COL Robert B. Nett — replaced Land Warrior. Future Force Warrior is a futuristic research project with real deliverables folded into the Nett Warrior program. Situational awareness including the Rifleman Radio on every soldier, head up display, location and Physiological Status Monitoring are the basic building blocks being implemented in increment 1. Rumors exist that shot detection is in block 2. This technology allows a soldier to identify the location of a shot taken.
Computer
The computer system in mid 2011 replaced an over weight Linux system with an Android smart phone.
Headgear Subsystem
The Headgear Subsystem, described in the Concept by FFW development team at Natick as Information Central, is the situational awareness hub of the system. It would include integrated tactical processing by providing maps, routes, and data with a 180° emissive visor display, high bandwidth wireless communications, microelectronic/optics combat sensor suite that provides 360° situational awareness, and integrated small arms protection.
In the current development program, the FFW Advanced Technology Demonstrator (ATD), this subsystem is labeled Sensors & Communications Vision. Its current capabilities would provide networked FFW-equipped small units with robust team communications using JTRS Cluster 5 Soldier Radio Waveform, state-of-the-art distributed and fused sensors, organic tactical intelligence/collection assets, enhanced situational understanding, embedded training, on-the-move planning, and linkage to other Future Combat System assets.
Combat Uniform Subsystem
The FFW project aims to help protect the soldier by providing full-body bullet and fragmentation protection. In the original concept, the Combat Uniform Subsystem, also known as Survivability Central, is subdivided into three layers, the Protective Outer Layer, the Power Centric Layer, and the Life Critical Layer.
Currently, under the Survivability Vision given by the Army’s ATD, bullet-resistant armor provides protection to the upper arms, the upper legs and the chest and abdomen…
