DefenceTech reports today that the US Army has decided to axe it’s $500 Million (so far) Land Warrior Soldier of the Future program. If this goes through the fallout loss of future medical technology under development will be enormous. many do not realize the enormous amount of medical technology that trickles down from the military (such as the swallowable gut-cams in a pill) and the first functional robot surgical system.
Here’s the report and the facts:
According to Inside Defense, service financiers have decided to kill off Land Warrior in its 2008 budget. It’s one of a number of high-tech programs slated for big cuts by the Army.
The service got $17 billion less than what it wanted for its 2008 budget from the Pentagon and the White House. “Earlier in October… Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker said if the service got less than what it needed in FY-08 it would be forced to slow the modernization of the force,” Inside Defense’s Dan Dupont notes. “In submitting its budget plan to Pentagon leaders last week, the Army contended that budget constraints have forced the service to take what it believes are imprudent risks in the readiness of today’s forces, as well as in its future plans.”
What is the Land Warrior Program? A nice review of the components of Land Warrior can be found here.
Land Warrior integrates small arms with high-tech equipment enabling ground forces to deploy, fight and win on the battlefields of the 21st century. Land Warrior came about in 1991 when an Army study group recommended the service look at the soldier as a complete weapon system. The first priority in Land Warrior is lethality. The second is survivability and the third, command and control. The program will cost $2 billion when 45,000 sets of the equipment are fielded between 2001-2014. The Marine Corps, Air Force and many foreign countries are interested in the system.
Based on recent advances in communications, sensors, and materials, the Land Warrior System integrates commercial, off-the-shelf technologies into a complete soldier system. For the first time, the soldier’s equipment is being designed as if he is an individual, complete weapons platform. Each subsystem and component is designed to and for the soldier. The result: the first integrated soldier fighting system for the dismounted infantryman.
The Components of Land Warrior & The Medical Uses of Each: Land Warrior has several subsystems: the weapon, integrated helmet assembly, protective clothing and individual equipment, computer/radio, and software. Each has enormous medical potentials.
Weapons Subsystem is built around an M-16 but includes electronic opticals (video camera, and the laser rangefinder/digital compass, GPS, nightvision). Medical use: Alternative visualization (the use of non-white light) is a huge area in medical endoscopic surgery development. Read here about the concept of future surgical vision and here and here about using this same exact infrared vision in surgery. The technology to integrate tiny sensors for infrared (ie night vision) into the rifle is the same to integrate it into a surgical telescope. Direct immediate medical application.
Integrated Helmet uses advanced lightweight protection with future materials but also couples the soldier to the digital battlefield. There is an advanced next-generation helmet mounted display (HMD) providing views of computer-generated graphical data, digital maps, intelligence information, troop locations, and the ability to view and control weapons around a corner. By looking with a thermal sight, the soldier will be able to see an area’s characteristics and can see through obscurants. The thermal images will appear on the HMD as can night vision images integrated with the soldier’s sight. Medical Applications: The concept of future vision in surgery and augmented visual system is discussed the paragraph above. An equally important off-shoot of the helmet is a next generation HMD display. HMD’s put tiny screens in your line of sight and add augmented information (beyond what the eye can see) or accessory info. These are being used today in surgery for endoscopy. The system I have used is a direct off-shoot of military HMD’s – except it’s military technology from the 80′s and 90′s. The state of the art surgical system is made by Viking Systems and uses the Kaiser Electro-Optical Military HMD. Today’s sytems suffer from lower resolution, no active head tracking, and weight. The Land Warrior addresses all of these and could go directly into the OR. The ability to overlay additional information such as CT scans,tumor image guidance, vital signs, etc directly uses the same military technology – and several surgical companies I know of are already trying to make this work. Direct immediate medical application.
Protective Clothing – a revolutionary backpack design based on state-of-the-art automotive racing technology which bends with the soldier’s natural body movements. Integrates with new smart body armor. Medical Uses: Again huge potential. Intellegent garments can be used to monitor health conditions (heart patient wears a shirt with built in telemetry) of many body systems. Light weight armor can be used as bmaterials for strong small surgical robots and for next generation prosthetics. All of these are in development today. Direct immediate medical application.
Computer/Radio Control is over a portable radio with miniature flat screen. Allows soldiers to exchange information and videos in real time. Menus are controlled with a remote input device attached to the soldier and activated with a finger touch. Medical Applications: information exchange for alternate visualization and new surgical gesture controls.
Is it a bluff? Haninah commented at defense tech on the Washington Monument Drill
there’s at least a chance that this is what some folks call a Washington Monument Drill. Say the National Parks Service is told they need to cut their budget. They huddle, and come out and announce with a straight face that in light of the cuts, they’ll have to shut down the Washington Monument. The Hill panics, and restores full funding. That’s what the Pentagon did all of a year ago, when they announced that any budget cuts would have to come out of National Guard budget, and sure ’nuff, Congress backed right down. Now, it could be that Land Warrior is the Army’s Washington Monument. Any time there’s an announcement that budget cuts are going to be absorbed by the part of the budget that makes the least sense to cut
On the Flip Side- Does Anyone Know How Much This Thing Costs?: Unfortunately, land Warrior is part of the Army’s Future Combat System (FCS) Initiative. This is the roadmap for an unprecedented hi-tech modernization of the Army. What’s new? How about an air force of completely unmanned remote controlled fighters– it’s in the budget! Unfortunately, the entire project is so far over budget it becomes a target for cuts. Originally at $60 billion, then $127B, recent estimates have balooned to $300 billion total cost (yes that’s billion with a b) and some are calling it the biggest military boondoggle ever. Here is a link to the Army’s PR rich review of what the billions will get us complete with photos and videos of what it will look like in action.
Video Update: Here is a link to one of the medtechs coming from FCS- “traumapod”
Update 2: Many comments saying military funding is just wrong or wasteful for medical development. Read here about why the military does what the medical industry won’t
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The assertion that medicine will suffer because of these cuts is hilarious at best, maliciously ignorant at worst. Here’s an idea: take the money that would have been spent on killing machines and fund medicine directly instead. Replace the trickle with a torrent of medical research funds.
I just returned to the top of the page and discovered that you are a doctor.
Do you seriously believe the best way to fund medical technology is by funding better killing machines? My god man.
You are drawing conclusions. I am not saying this is the only nor best way to fund medical research. However, issues like this are presented very one sided- the money goes to the military only. This is not true. It is an clear fact that military R&D pushes medical technology many years ahead. Medical development does not have the budget to create the first surgical robot. The military did whenthey were working onremote battlefield surgery and now it’s revolutionizing surgery. Medicine did not have the technology to develop HMD’s for surgery – the air force did and now we use them. Even the lasers we use ever day. It is for the reader to decide the value judgement of where the money should go. Medicine R&D budgets pale compared to the military (as many think is societal misguidance). My prime point here is that in the new medical technology world the inspiration and technology for my devices comes from the military constantly. If they get the billions then I am happy to take their technology when it is declassified. The public needs to know military technology has other uses as well.
Mark,
All this post seems to say is that the military was developing tech that would work on both the hurting and the healing sides of the coin and what a disappointment the author felt, as a fixer of people, not to have these tools available for helping people.
Also, I am in the military and I sense that you aren’t happy with us. We have been misused on occasion, but the military’s primary purpose is to make sure our counterparts across the world don’t come to your house. As long as there is one person in the world who desires power over others, you will need me and people like me.
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I work for a small medical tech startup that is developing a non-invasive vital-sign monitoring device to market based on UWB tech developed at Lawrence Livermore in the 80′s. I joined three years ago, fresh out of college. My first two years I bore witness to our efforts to bring in some funding through partnerships/licensing of our device with private-sector medical-device manufacturers and the furthest we ever got through two and a half years of effort was the response: “Hmmm, looks promising, but could you give me more data?” The first couple of months of this was understandable but after two years, I got a little jaded about the vaunted risk-taking capabilities of the private-sector… at least the big corporations. Our big break (at the moment) finally came with a SBIR (Small Business Innovation in Research) grant from the Army because they were looking for technology to give their medics better vital-sign monitoring capablilties in the field. The Army liked the results of that grant enough to give us more money to continue which will allow us to build a 2nd-gen prototype and fund another study.
Sure the military is a gigantic bueacracy with a main focus on guns and bombs (kind of hard to avoid that when its the nature of military conflict) but there is good tech that gets developed that would otherwise be passed up by the private-sector as “too risky”.
Doc, as I read your article, in my mind’s eye, I coming up to you and saying, “I don’t want to talk TO you. I want to talk WITH you.” To most people, the difference in the choice of preposition may mean nothing, te me, it means dragging you over to the same side of the table. This mean it would stay as a respectful chat. I hope we can keep it that way. As a disabled vet, it would be great to see the implimentation of the “Land Warrior Program”. The medical aspects would have a trickle down impacts, could come to all of us. The problem I have is this, the money, even if were appropriated/ OMB approved, written into law signed by the President would not get to the actual program. The money would fall into a “slush fund”. POTUS is required to sign off on the actual release of the funds, not just signing the bill into law. It would be the same as signing the contract and signing the check. The really strange thing is I would be glad to be wrong!
“Grumpy Disabled Vet”
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Wow– so many people are angry that so much money is spent on the military rather than on pure medical research. They are missing the point of this post. My point is to review the facts of how far reaching military programs lead to far reaching medical breakthroughts. This is not a statement of support nor criticism just a review of the facts. To take this discussion to the next step here is a post about why the medical industry does not do what the military does for medicine (again not saying this is right just that it is the way it is).
http://docinthemachine.com/2006/12/21/darpamedtech/
Actually, a large number of the technological advances that we as a society are used to were pioneered in military applications.
GPS, Celluar phone technlogy, Satelite Communications, and a large number of medical advances.
It is doubtful that military research is going to find the cure for aids or cancer. But that really is not the focus of the military. On the other hand, I would respectfully submit that the vast majority of the techniques used in Emergency Rooms every day are pioneered and refined based on military situations. For that matter, a lot of limb repair and replacement research finds its first use in such applications.
On the whole track of military budgets and R&D costs…
I would just like to point out to those ‘angry’ people saying we should spend money to fund med programs directly and not have the funding go to the military…
Keep in mind that research on weapons that kill is actually saving lives. Now before you start throwing those stones, let me explain. Virtually all industrialized nations with a military have R&D programs to make better more accurate weapons. From a soldiers perspective having a better weapon then your enemy increases your chance of survival in a fight. Therefore if we do not spend the money on development to keep ourselves in the lead, then a potential enemy will, thereby lowering the survivability of our soldiers.
This coupled with the fact that much military tech trickles down to the civilian med world, helps to further human survivability in general.
I think people need to put things into perspective. If a program is on the chopping block that is perceived to be expendable but in this case is not, perhapses it’s time to look at more creative ideas to save money, because this is the bottom line, no one wants to fit the bill for such a huge budget.
Finally as one who doesn’t just point out problems without solutions. Better organization/consolidation of resources is needed in our military, not killing programs. We no longer require bases throughout the world to support our allies. Bases in strategic locations around the world could be much more efficient and would handle the budget issue.
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The real question begging to be answered is the OR assessments…with this technology how many more of the enemy can we kill compared to how many of us that they kill. It has always been the risk vv. the cost vv. the gain.
It is naive to believe that this program is tied to medical, although a spin-off is understood. The mdeical CLINs should be under their own program and funding is Congress really cared about saving the future soldier from death or maiming.
Low tech vv. high tech can be weighed only by the kill-ratio…and if we want a volunteer army at the levels we have now to fight in an assymetircal environment as the Middle East, then this program makes sense to a bean-counter.
But trying to minimize civilian casualties is a pipe-dream. WWII was won by making the civilian sector suffer for their politics and loyalties, not bombing just the Wehrmacht or Luftwaffe assets. The bottom-line is to kill this program if it has a high kill ratio in light of the low birth rates in the western world makes no sense at all. But to believe that that we can win in a moral war without gun fodder assets is even more naive. In the end, boots-on-the-ground is a more humane albeit higher risk to us than high tech air power or special weapon systems.
The lesson of Iraq is the same lesson of Korea or Vietnam. We were ill equipped for the manpower demands of these wars. And there was a vacuum of experienced leadership at the top ends of the enlisted or officer ranks. And no matter what material or technological edge we had over our opponents, the war was fought and lost by the ground warfare operations.
Religious or cultural bias older than our own can never be defeated by high tech…against large sacle armies in the field fighting the traditional european style wars, tech makes sense. In the Middle East, it does not. Me against my brother; my brother and I against the strange typifies what we are faced with today.
Our greatest strengths in previous situations has been leadership in the field; and not back in some secure video game center.
Think of this…the Iranian proxy is safe and secure while he threatens the Iraqi and American forces; yet we will not remove him from the equation, and continue to play on his and Iran’s terms. High or low tech cannot overcome bad political decisions. And to remove this individual from the geopolitical equation requires troops not more “laptops”. In either case we continue to lose soldiers. But we would lose less men and women in the field by changing the equation variables by attacking the root causual factors in this war…the leadership. I never understood why the “little” people always had to die while the “big” people lived on. We took and contained Sadir (sp) City once before……but failed to eliminate the source of the problem-the leadership.
Patroling with a net centric futuristic warrior makes no sense if the objective of the mission is cut the tail of the snake rather than cutting its head. And for all of our high tech, we are failing for lack of the basic grunt warrior with or without the equipment needed to fight or survive in a culture and religion hostile to our western civilization.
The soldiers need now the medical diagnostic equipment to save their lives in the field. The Robo Cop or Starship Troopers gear is a nice thought…we can leave for the time after we either win or extract ourselves from this low tech battlefield.
Better spend our money reclaiming the sold-off VOA and improving our propaganda machinery than gambling on giving a small number of grunts some high tech weapon systems that will kill no more of the enemy than we can kill now with the few number of hands available to feed into a meat grinder called Iraq.
A low cost solution to a low tech battlefield would be to use shotguns in close quarters. Let God sort out the innocent from the guilty for it makes little difference to a grunt holding his buddy’s guts in with his helmet or battle dressing whether the enemy was young, old, innocent or guilty…war is horrible and should be kept as such so men could not wage it in a clean manner…over and over and over again. We are trying to save their youth while killing our low numbered youth and future leaders off……where is the risk assessment of this to our nation’s future? And all of this discourse means nothing to the soldier in the field trying to make it to the next day, the next mission, the next hour, and the next minute.
There are no innocents in war…just the living and the dead. But are we killing the right people, or just shooting at what is shooting at us?
Since I am a OA proponent, and we have a low manned volunteer military I say we can the Buck Rodgers gear, and invest in the medical tools to save what is left of our undermanned, ill-equipped soldiers until we determine what our end-game is in Iraq or the Middle East as a whole. Spreading democracy and western morality is a function of our State Department, not our military. We cannot even get our local police force to help change a flat tire for our citizens in need, or contain the out-of-control gang killings in our inner cities. And yet we are attempting to change a culture’s paradigms thousands of years old…and who puts little value in human life as opposed to tribal or religious metrics. That rational smacks of low tech thinking.
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I definitely do think that millitary medical research can be beneficial in a variety of ways, but I don’t support funding weapons advancement in the name of medicine.
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Hey I thought this article on medical technology was great. We have a bunch of other future and present battlefield at our website
Future Firepower. Stop by and check it out some time and let us know what you think.
This is bullshit. As a soldier and a infintrymen Im really pissed. The land warrior syster was 16 pounds so Im not happy about hauling that thing around. When they also said the exsoskelton was cut from funding that got me. Every bound under fire with 85 pounds of gear on? It sucks.
Really a very interesting and helpful blog ant the posts.
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