With their sophisticated navigation, radio, radar, sonar, database and fire control systems, naval and air forces around the globe traditionally have surpassed land forces by decades in the deployment of advanced electronic and network-centric warfare assists. Until a decade ago, the only electronic assists that land forces brought to their hands-on battle space were rugged battlefield voice radios. The appearance of hand-held electronic NAVSTAR satellite global positioning system (GPS) navigators during the First Gulf War was a small step beyond the use of battlefield voice radios towards a new era of full-scale electronic network-centric warfare.

The land warrior’s archaic pre-electronic age methods and tools provided a modicum of manually-created situational awareness (SA) and force tracking data (blue or friendly force, and red or enemy force) that quickly became obsolete as the fight progressed. Unlike their sea and airborne brethren warfighters, land force warfighters were starved for timely situation, geographic and targeting information and were often lost or mired in the fog of wars.

New era in land warfare

Today, land force warfighters are no longer the military’s technology-poor cousins! A new era in land warfare has arrived in which the computer data network is the weapon. DRS Tactical Systems, Inc. of Melbourne, Florida, is a leading manufacturer of tactical computing tools that electronically enable today’s premiere land forces, rendering them the battlefield’s dominant possessors of actionable information.

The US Army currently fields the DRS Tactical Systems’ RVS-330 tactical computers for its Force XXI battle command brigade and below (FBCB2) battlefield digitisation programme, and the British Army likewise is fielding DRS’ ultra rugged computers to its Bowman battlefield digitisation programme. DRS is today the leading manufacturer of ultra rugged computers currently used by the US and British Armies in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).

Ultra rugged computers

As deployed by the world’s leading armies, DRS’ ultra rugged computers can be fully networked. They are regularly hooked into terrestrial line of sight (LOS) tactical internets (TI), beyond line of sight (BLOS) SATCOM nets, and the NAVSTAR-based global positioning system, which provides the deployed warfighter with timely, accurate information throughout the modern battle space.

The Figure above illustrates the four-element RVS-330 computer, as used by the US Army in Abrams main battle tanks and other land force vehicles. Depicted on the screen of the display unit of the computer is an electronic map. That electronically networked virtual map is but one element of a blue force tracking (BFT) application that runs on the DRS Tactical Systems’ rugged computing hardware.

Today’s soldiers claim that progress in battlefield digitisation has not only enhanced their capabilities on the battlefield, but it has saved the lives of soldiers and civilians alike. As warriors battle non-traditional, less conspicuous enemies, continued enhancements to hardware and software will improve the frequency of success in critical missions throughout the world.

Peter Brackett is Director of Advanced Technology, DRS Technologies