Half of these seem poorly thought out, and this seems poorly written for someone of that position. For instance, #3 blinding lights, is easily mitigated by #2 non-ambient/thermal vision. #4, sound weapons are going to effect everyone in the tunnel, so offense is limited. #10 foam grenades, are less effective for concealment, and ineffective as cover, most outgas toxic and flamable vocs. Existing procedure of collapsing tunnel has neither downside and accomplished with existing, legacy, and improvised tech. I won't even touch on headlamps, and insisting on an actual live canary.
> For instance, #3 blinding lights, is easily mitigated by #2 non-ambient/thermal vision.
No, because you need to use your susceptible-to-blinding eyes to use the thermal-vision system. Also, of course, the fact that I have blinding & thermal-vision systems doesn't mean that my foe does.
> #4, sound weapons are going to effect everyone in the tunnel, so offense is limited.
That's true in general of acoustic weapons. Presumably if they can be made directional above-ground they might be made directional below-ground — or they could be treated as acoustic 'grenades,' in that they are deployed prior to ingress.
> #10 foam grenades, are less effective for concealment, and ineffective as cover, most outgas toxic and flamable vocs. Existing procedure of collapsing tunnel has neither downside and accomplished with existing, legacy, and improvised tech.
A small amount of slightly-carcinogenic gas beats getting shot. Sealing off a tunnel connected to the one I'm in seems far preferable to collapsing it and possibly my own. It also could make rescuing civilians who've taken shelter in the tunnel system more possible.
> I won't even touch on headlamps, and insisting on an actual live canary.
I'd trust an actual live animal a lot more than I would some lowest-bidder system.
For sure one of the biggest needs. I did link to the DARPA project working on that now. I just didn't add it to my list because it is being worked on so aggressively.
Nearly everything on your list already exists and much is in limited use by the military already.
I think you missed the biggest item you missed is good hearing protection and sound suppression. In enclosed spaces all the normal issues with loud noises (i.e. guns and explosives) are massively magnified. In fact, it would be terrible to bring a dog much less a canary into this environment.
Can confirm, we were always told to keep our mouths slightly open when setting off charged explosives or grenades. We were told that the overpressure could rupture our eardrums if we didn’t.
Good hearing pro is a must
That would be nice, but AR needs precise positioning information, and GPS doesn’t work very well underground. It’s also likely to need good long range communications, and ditto.
Love to fantasize about even more war toys which will of course only be used to “spread democracy” etc etc and obviously will never make their way into the hands of racist domestic police forces to use on activists once they’re on sale as military surplus. Very legal and very cool.
Well, please, don't do that, or assume bad faith, it's counter-guidelines.
On the actual topic at hand, even assuming this technology finds its way into the hands of police forces (racism or not), what's the use case? People hiding in sewers and drainage pipes? Natural cave systems? Underground mall networks in urban environments? The item with the most potential for invasion of privacy in the article is the ground-penetrating radar (when pointed sideways at houses), but that has already been around for a few years, and there is both literature and case law on police using radar in that capacity.
There’s also the matter of police militarization being an end run around constitutional protections re: domestically deployed armed forces. I’m not arguing in bad faith. I’m offering a legitimate (if unpopular) critique.
As a wish list and an idea-sparking exploration,
this is quite interesting. I would add some sort
of return-path and side-passage marking system,
perhaps with paint or ink that is only visible in
some combinations of illumination and goggles,
that is more resistant to being cut or redirected
than IR cord or rope.
Batteries and LED bulbs have come a long way in the last
30 years, and the community of civilian cavers would
be a good source for suggestions about durable equipment.
Ask people in Huntsville, AL - the home of an Army base,
rocket scientists, karst topography, and the NSS <https://caves.org>.
With AR you wouldn't even need a physical marking, the system could keep track of where everyone's been and show breadcrumbs in everyone else's display/goggles/whatever.
(Of course this assumes some kind of connectivity between the headsets of the various members of the fire team, which could itself be vulnerable in various ways. Painting the walls does have the virtue of simplicity, which counts for a lot in these scenarios.)
Inertial guidance on a cellphone was written up last year. It's clearly a work in progress, but it's a good start. HN link to it is here [0].
I'd bet that if this continues (and I presume the military would want to ensure it continues if only for redundancy purposes), that we'll have accurate inertial guidance on our phones in a decade.
the thing about dead reckoning is that anything less then perfect tends to have degraded usefulness after a while unless supplemented with some outside data to reference again.
Now thing about a soldier underground who might be subjected to explosions nearby, shooting, being shot at, having to dive for cover and these are all things that are going to screw up any inertial guidance system which is why the suggestions of paint or something make a whole lot of sense.
Several of these ideas could be combined into a remote controlled robot that can go in front of soldiers and around corners while keeping an eye in every direction. If it encounters an enemy combatant the operator could deploy some of the blinding light/sound nonlethals directly on the robot before the soldiers move in.
Sounds like a lot of power reqs, and therefore a lot of AA/AAA batteries. For many of the more tech-forward piece of equip the Army produces, there is a heavy dependency on batteries to the tune of 10xAAA for ~2hrs of consistent use, for example. That sort of burn rate turns into massive, massive, MASSIVE battery requirements for even 24 hr operations. There simply is not enough ruck space.
That's all to say, these ideas sound great. But the odds that the Army has a combat-loaded Soldier + ruck try to carry whatever comes out of this before fielding it all to the force are rather low. Or, solve power source first.
What's a 'ruck'? The US term for a pack carried on your back?
They keep suggesting ideas like a single battery pack and a power distribution system integrated into your vest. But I think that'll end up very much like '14 competing standards... now 15 competing standards.' You already have systems needing AA, AAA, and CR123A. You can never balance how many you need as well so you're wasting and running out of AAA when you have tons of AA still left.
I also feel terrible when I get back from just a couple of days on the ground and have to recycle (no idea how they recycle them, let's be pessimistic and calling it really throwing away) a KG or more of batteries.
A rucksack is a backpack. The term has become more common in civilian use but was primarily from military use. According to Wikipedia it's from German, not sure how it entered the US/UK military lingo.
Wikipedia claims UK military uses the term, I added that only from there. It's definitely common in US military lingo and the military-wannabes (see the many civilians or law enforcement who buy GoRuck rucksacks and attend Go Ruck events). I probably should've limited my comment to US-only, but went with what Wikipedia said and added it.
ruck = very large hiking backpack that's made out of pretty durable non-rip waxed type of fabric with a large frame. Great for carrying a lot of heavy stuff a long distance. Issue is, w/ a load that means your really seriously heading out to do something... there isn't much extra room.
But then add the extra batteries for the current radio system that's most widespread in the force (ASIPs, usually carry 1 to 2), with this 4''x 2'' battery packs for ASIPs that in turn take up a lot of space (carry 3-4 spares), and then extra ammo, and then the 'portable' equipment for optics or the heavy weapon systems that tend to be deemed 'portable'
... there just literally is no. more. room. And then there's some more added.
These types of cool new tech, which are battery powered, are hamstrung by the simple fact of "how do I carry a massive amount of batteries for all this?"
So it in turn puts soldiers and leaders in a really precarious position of either having to fight a tough battle of stating all of the obvious that I said above, getting told to bring it all out anyways, and then not really being able to. So do we hope we don't get asked "where is X-equipment, is it on your person," or do we lie, or do we what?
Since this article came from USMA, it's a good place to lead upstream conversation on this sort of core issue.
No integrating the power distribution into the vest - the cables. So power goes down your sling to your rifle to deliver power for optics, lasers, torch etc, and up a cable to your helmet for more optics, and so on. The battery lives on your belt kit I think in prototypes I've seen.
I don't think you would want a power cord going from your vest from your rifle. If it gets caught on something you either get stuck or your rifle loses power.
There is a lot of work on making a powered accessory rail for rifles though, so that everything on it would share the same battery. I thought that battery would always be on the rifle though.
Any reason they don't use rechargeable batteries? No power to charge them? Too hard to set up the infrastructure? Don't last enough charges to make it worth it?
Power to charge them. Those rechargers are slaved into m1097s (vehicles), generators, and the like. That's a logistical non-starter, even assuming an acceptable consumption rate if you're out for ~24 hr missions, or 24 hrs as a planning factor.
but really quantify the consumption rate, ~10xAAAs burned over 2 hours of consistent use is dead accurate, and thats 1x piece of equip. So rechargeable or not, the in-mission load is the problem
> single battery pack and a power distribution system integrated into your vest
This could be really bad potentially, I think the average weight of just a normal vest they bring with ammo is between 40-80 lbs.
There would have to be several refactors to reduce the current weight before introducing the weight of batteries. I wonder if you could reduce the weight of bullets for CQB ammo. You don't really need a bullet to travel several hundred yards in a CQB/Tunnel environment. If so, it would make sense to have a special weapons system like a long barreled SAW with a thermal scope.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. You're already carrying these batteries. The idea isn't to carry more batteries - it's to carry the same batteries but share them between all devices. The weight should stay the same, or go down as you have less battery packaging.
> I wonder if you could reduce the weight of bullets for CQB ammo. You don't really need a bullet to travel several hundred yards in a CQB/Tunnel environment.
not a modern combat expert, but this seems like it would also reduce the ability to penetrate armor. 5.56 is already a pretty small bullet, so you would mostly end up reducing the amount of powder.
The author talks about the importance of tunnel warfare.
About halfway between Dallas and Austin is Ft. Hood, the Army’s largest base. After WWII, so only a few years after it had been set up in the first place, the Army dynamited a series of caves in the very sparse western section of the base to carve out a massive underground structure for nuclear weapons.
The Army doesn’t use / maintain nuclear weapons anymore, but the bunker has been repurposed into a basically one-of-a-kind underground training environment. Units from all over the world train there. Pretty cool stuff.
54 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadNo, because you need to use your susceptible-to-blinding eyes to use the thermal-vision system. Also, of course, the fact that I have blinding & thermal-vision systems doesn't mean that my foe does.
> #4, sound weapons are going to effect everyone in the tunnel, so offense is limited.
That's true in general of acoustic weapons. Presumably if they can be made directional above-ground they might be made directional below-ground — or they could be treated as acoustic 'grenades,' in that they are deployed prior to ingress.
> #10 foam grenades, are less effective for concealment, and ineffective as cover, most outgas toxic and flamable vocs. Existing procedure of collapsing tunnel has neither downside and accomplished with existing, legacy, and improvised tech.
A small amount of slightly-carcinogenic gas beats getting shot. Sealing off a tunnel connected to the one I'm in seems far preferable to collapsing it and possibly my own. It also could make rescuing civilians who've taken shelter in the tunnel system more possible.
> I won't even touch on headlamps, and insisting on an actual live canary.
I'd trust an actual live animal a lot more than I would some lowest-bidder system.
Some of these ideas are half-baked but interesting nonetheless.
I think you missed the biggest item you missed is good hearing protection and sound suppression. In enclosed spaces all the normal issues with loud noises (i.e. guns and explosives) are massively magnified. In fact, it would be terrible to bring a dog much less a canary into this environment.
On the actual topic at hand, even assuming this technology finds its way into the hands of police forces (racism or not), what's the use case? People hiding in sewers and drainage pipes? Natural cave systems? Underground mall networks in urban environments? The item with the most potential for invasion of privacy in the article is the ground-penetrating radar (when pointed sideways at houses), but that has already been around for a few years, and there is both literature and case law on police using radar in that capacity.
Batteries and LED bulbs have come a long way in the last 30 years, and the community of civilian cavers would be a good source for suggestions about durable equipment. Ask people in Huntsville, AL - the home of an Army base, rocket scientists, karst topography, and the NSS <https://caves.org>.
(Of course this assumes some kind of connectivity between the headsets of the various members of the fire team, which could itself be vulnerable in various ways. Painting the walls does have the virtue of simplicity, which counts for a lot in these scenarios.)
I'd bet that if this continues (and I presume the military would want to ensure it continues if only for redundancy purposes), that we'll have accurate inertial guidance on our phones in a decade.
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19203494
Now thing about a soldier underground who might be subjected to explosions nearby, shooting, being shot at, having to dive for cover and these are all things that are going to screw up any inertial guidance system which is why the suggestions of paint or something make a whole lot of sense.
That's all to say, these ideas sound great. But the odds that the Army has a combat-loaded Soldier + ruck try to carry whatever comes out of this before fielding it all to the force are rather low. Or, solve power source first.
They keep suggesting ideas like a single battery pack and a power distribution system integrated into your vest. But I think that'll end up very much like '14 competing standards... now 15 competing standards.' You already have systems needing AA, AAA, and CR123A. You can never balance how many you need as well so you're wasting and running out of AAA when you have tons of AA still left.
I also feel terrible when I get back from just a couple of days on the ground and have to recycle (no idea how they recycle them, let's be pessimistic and calling it really throwing away) a KG or more of batteries.
> not sure how it entered the US/UK military lingo
'Ruck' is definitely not UK military lingo! Talking about a 'rucksack' sounds extremely civilian to my British ears.
The UK military term is 'bergen' or 'daysack' or something smaller.
'Rücken' being 'back' and 'Sack' being... 'sack' or 'bag'.
But then add the extra batteries for the current radio system that's most widespread in the force (ASIPs, usually carry 1 to 2), with this 4''x 2'' battery packs for ASIPs that in turn take up a lot of space (carry 3-4 spares), and then extra ammo, and then the 'portable' equipment for optics or the heavy weapon systems that tend to be deemed 'portable'
... there just literally is no. more. room. And then there's some more added.
These types of cool new tech, which are battery powered, are hamstrung by the simple fact of "how do I carry a massive amount of batteries for all this?"
So it in turn puts soldiers and leaders in a really precarious position of either having to fight a tough battle of stating all of the obvious that I said above, getting told to bring it all out anyways, and then not really being able to. So do we hope we don't get asked "where is X-equipment, is it on your person," or do we lie, or do we what?
Since this article came from USMA, it's a good place to lead upstream conversation on this sort of core issue.
There is a lot of work on making a powered accessory rail for rifles though, so that everything on it would share the same battery. I thought that battery would always be on the rifle though.
but really quantify the consumption rate, ~10xAAAs burned over 2 hours of consistent use is dead accurate, and thats 1x piece of equip. So rechargeable or not, the in-mission load is the problem
This could be really bad potentially, I think the average weight of just a normal vest they bring with ammo is between 40-80 lbs.
There would have to be several refactors to reduce the current weight before introducing the weight of batteries. I wonder if you could reduce the weight of bullets for CQB ammo. You don't really need a bullet to travel several hundred yards in a CQB/Tunnel environment. If so, it would make sense to have a special weapons system like a long barreled SAW with a thermal scope.
not a modern combat expert, but this seems like it would also reduce the ability to penetrate armor. 5.56 is already a pretty small bullet, so you would mostly end up reducing the amount of powder.
About halfway between Dallas and Austin is Ft. Hood, the Army’s largest base. After WWII, so only a few years after it had been set up in the first place, the Army dynamited a series of caves in the very sparse western section of the base to carve out a massive underground structure for nuclear weapons.
The Army doesn’t use / maintain nuclear weapons anymore, but the bunker has been repurposed into a basically one-of-a-kind underground training environment. Units from all over the world train there. Pretty cool stuff.
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Littl...