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Future Combat Systems, here and now

Sep 13, 2008

The U.S. Army has ambitious plans for a widespread high-tech refresh of its vehicles and other soldier gear. It's also finding a way to make some parts happen sooner rather than later.

"This little robotic fellow in the foreground looks like he might have missed the casting call for Wall-E, but he actually has one of the featured roles in the US Army's long-running Future Combat Systems drama. He's posing here at the end of July during a training exercise in New Mexico, as the Army moves to get some of its mildly futuristic gear combat-ready ahead of the original FCS schedule.

We say "mildly futuristic" because the robot, known as a SUGV (small unmanned ground vehicle), isn't really all that different from the iRobot PackBots and other remote-controlled gadgets already in widespread service in Iraq and other dangerous places. The grander future envisioned for FCS, some five years on already, lies in two areas: First, replacing aging weapons and equipment with 21st-century tech, and second, getting all the many software-intensive FCS pieces--robots, sensors, howitzers--and soldiers themselves linked on a ubiquitous, high-speed wireless network.

Credit: Photo by Stephen Baack; Caption by Jonathan Skillings