Army Infantry Finds New Way to Win Close-in Fight

Video: Air Force & Raytheon Upgrade Air-Attack Weapons to “Counter” New “Countermeasures”

byKris Osborn– Warrior Maven

If an enemy fighter was several hundred yards away, another was attacking from one mile away, while yet a third fired from a nearby room in a close-quarters urban warfare circumstance, how would U.S. Army soldiers apprehend, integrate, and quickly map the locations of multiple targets at once in 3D, all while knowing the range and distance of the enemy forces? Could something like this be possible, one might wonder, given the nuances in perspective, range, navigational circumstances, and the limitations of a human eye?

These complexities form the conceptual basis upon which the Army is fast-tracking its Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), soldier-worn combat goggles engineered with advanced sensors able to overcome some of the limitations of human vision and quickly organize target data.

Army soldiers recently conducted a wide range of combat operations using an augmented reality visual heads up display device that enables individual soldiers to fight, rehearse, and train all on a single system.

The service’s Integrated Visual Augmentation System has been demonstrated by an Army team of developers through a series of recent exercises at Fort Pickett, VA, an Army statement said.

“IVAS is designed to enhance the lethality and survivability of the Army’s Close Combat Force through a combination of technologies and augmented reality capabilities delivered in the form of a Heads-Up Display device. It is a single platform that allows the Soldier to fight, rehearse, and train, because it leverages networked information sharing and mixed and augmented reality technologies,” an Army report said.

Dr. Bruce Jette, Assistant Secretary of the Army, Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, told Warrior in an interview earlier this year that engineers created IVAS with an ability to compensate for what might otherwise be some of the limitations of the human eye. Operation of IVAS calls upon a degree of what could be described as “Human-Machine Interface” because it integrates some of the neurological processes of human vision with software engineered to process, organize and display otherwise challenging factors such as “depth perception,” surrounding peripheral objects and other elements of human visual orientation.