Its been a long time coming but your average Joe in the U.S. Army Infantry is now beginning to get some real tech gear.  The Joint Chiefs just love their big toys but the current War on Terror is as much as anything else more often than not an infantry battle happening at a time when the public is increasingly unwilling to accept casualties.  So they chiseled out the cash to accelerate development of some technology that can give our soldiers on the ground some of the edge our planes and ships have had for some time.  Here’s a short bit from the Strategy Page :

May 19, 2006: About a decade ahead of schedule, the U.S. Army has equipped a combat battalion with computer equipped infantry. This is the "Land Warrior" concept, first envisioned two decades ago. Put simply, Land Warrior is an infantryman equipped with gear that, until recently, seemed the stuff of science fiction. But reality has been closing in quickly, and the Land Warrior ensemble the troops are getting is 17 pounds of computers, displays (an eyepiece), radio, GPS, vidcam and battlefield wi-fi.

…

If Land Warrior 1.0 proves durable and reliable enough to work in combat, it will change the way troops fight. Everyone will be able to move around more quickly, confidently and effectively. This model has already been demonstrated with the Stryker units. Captured enemy gunmen often complained of how the Strykers came out of nowhere, and skillfully maneuvered to surround and destroy their targets. This was often done at night, with no lights (using night vision gear.) When you have infantry using Land Warrior gear to do the same thing on foot, you demoralize the enemy. Hostile Iraqis already attribute all manner of science fiction type capabilities to American troops. But with Land Warrior, the bar will have to be raised on what’s science fiction, and what is just regular issue gear. This is typical of what happens in wartime, where the demand for better weapons and equipment, and a realistic place to test it, greatly accelerates the development and deployment of the new stuff.

Good stuff, though sadly no pictures of the actual live version yet, and we can only hope it gets out there as fast as possible.  Our guys deserve all the help we can give them.  Below is an image showing where the program is going long term, though it hasn’t gotten as far as the features listed yet.