Army
The U.S. Army should investigate alternative power sources, such as fuel cells and small engines, to create longer-lasting, lighter, cheaper, and more reliable sources of energy for the equipment soldiers will use in the future, says a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council. In addition, the Army should step up its efforts to develop and acquire technologies that are more energy-efficient, said the committee that wrote the report.
The U.S. Defense Department's Combat Feeding program is aiming to give soldiers what they want. Currently, the Meal, Ready-to-Eat, or MRE, is used to sustain individuals in the field. But mobile troops, who may not have much time to eat, take out only certain food components from the MRE rations, leaving up to 50 percent of the unused portion behind to be thrown away. A prototype ''First Strike'' ration program would provide highly mobile ground troops with total eat-on-the-move capability. The idea is to provide a single ration per day containing only food items that are easy to use and consume.
The Army's future soldier will resemble something out of a science fiction movie, members of Congress witnessed at a demonstration on Capitol Hill July 23. The newest concepts for lightweight, lethal uniform systems to be worn by the future soldiers in battle were displayed at the Russell Senate Building here. Two uniform systems are under development. The Future Force Warrior system will be available for fielding to soldiers in 2010. The Vision 2020 Future Warrior system, which will follow on the concept of the 2010 Future Force Warrior system, is scheduled to be ready 10 years later.
The U.S. Army plans to accelerate the fielding of some Future Combat Systems such as armed robotic vehicles, unattended ground sensors and unattended munitions. The Army is taking advantage of leaps and bounds in wireless technology to ''spiral'' FCS development, said Lt. Gen. Joseph L. Yakovac, military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. He said spiraling allows for a more flexible approach to system development, to add technology as it emerges.
Special operations forces are deployed worldwide, but changes have made the operations tempo for those forces ''difficult, but manageable,'' officials said before Congress today. Army Col. Kenneth J. Cull, the personnel chief at U.S. Special Operations Command, told the House Armed Services Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee how the command is working on the optempo problem.
A nerve agent sensor developed by a Pennsylvania company was named one of the 10 ''Greatest Army Inventions'' of the past year by the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command. The Sensor is a hand-held device that rapidly changes color in the presence of a contaminant such as sarin, one of many nerve agents that are feared to be used in chemical warfare or terrorist attack.
Since the age of 12, Cpl. Kayelee Yazzie knew she wanted to be a communicator in the Marine Corps. Yazzie, a Navajo, comes from a long line of military family members. Her father was an airman in Vietnam; her 77-year-old grandfather served with the Army in Germany during World War II; and his stepbrother was a Marine codetalker in Japan during the same war. ''Code talkers are highly respected people in my tribe,'' the 20 year old said. ''I knew I wanted to follow in their footsteps and carry on their legacy.''
A device to help eliminate friendly fire during military combat has been created by engineers at the National Nuclear Security Administration's Sandia National Laboratories. Building on more than 10 years of research and development, Sandia engineers have created a radar tag sensor that is mounted on military vehicles and is recognizable to an attack aircraft as a "friendly." The device, tracked via aircraft radar, can be used to identify both U.S. and coalition forces during combat to avoid fratricide. During war, fratricide is the act of killing one's own soldiers.
Army leaders have recommended canceling a multibillion-dollar helicopter program, citing an Army study that suggests the funds would be more effective improving other areas of the service's aviation program. Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee today announced that he and the service's chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, recommended canceling the 21-year-old Comanche helicopter program after a comprehensive review of Army aviation technology and structure. The roughly $14 billion allocated to the program between now and 2011 will go toward other aviation programs, he said.
Nearly 10 percent of female Army recruits tested positive for the bacteria that causes the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia (Chlamydia trachomatis), according to researchers from Johns Hopkins, the Department of Defense and the Army. The researchers also found that the number of recruits testing positive for chlamydia increased over the four-year duration of the study, from 1996 to 1999.
Under rows of tents and inside large aircraft hangars, more than 2,600 force protection products were demonstrated and exhibited for Defense Department, federal and local agencies at Force Protection Equipment Demonstration IV May 6-8. Among the highlights: Geocell Systems, which demonstrated how to build sand barriers using a foldable plastic device. The modular and collapsible plastic grids require no special tools and can be assembled in seconds to hold sand horizontally to any desired length. The grids are also stackable to hold sand vertically. Barney Greinke, director of marketing for the company, said the sand-filled wall can act as a barrier against vehicles, and can help stop small-arms fire and blast fragments from small bombs. "You have to understand that a wall of sand 4 feet wide by 8 feet tall weighs around 12,000 pounds," Greinke said, "So it can be quite effective. It's basically replaces the sandbag."
Two styles of leadership - rewarding performance and building identification for the mission - used in combination are good predictors of simulated Army platoon unit performances during times of high stress and uncertainty, according to a study on leadership styles and performance. Transactional contingent reward leadership uses recognition and rewards for goals as motivating forces for its members. Transformational leadership builds personal and social identification among its members with the mission and goals of the leader and organization.
The Department of Defense has designated the Army as Executive Agent for implementing plans to extinguish oil well fires and to assess the damage to oil facilities during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The plan, which was turned over to the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), encompasses the full range of activities that might be necessary to restore or continue the operation of the Iraqi oil infrastructure, which is of vital importance to the future health of Iraq?s economy.
Pentagon officials showed pictures today from the 1991 Gulf War of an Iraqi tank completely destroyed by a 105 mm round made of depleted uranium. The round had pierced the tank's thick armor, leaving only a burned out shell. Even more impressive, they told of how a DU round had penetrated directly through a sand dune to demolish a tank hiding behind it. "That's how much of an edge it gives us, and we don't want to give that up," Col. James Naughton of the Army Materiel Command said today at a Pentagon briefing to explain the uses and health effects of DU on the battlefield.
Military environmental health risk experts were unprepared in 1991 when Saddam Hussein ordered engineers to blow up hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells. Over the next seven months, more than 1 billion barrels of oil went up in flames, some creating huge, dark soot plumes. Kuwait and much of the Persian Gulf was shrouded in poisonous smoke, creating a large-scale environmental disaster and possible medical problems for U.S. troops breathing the contaminated air.
