By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
(Washington D.C.) Stryker-mounted drone and helicopter-destroying HELLFIRE missiles, lasers to incinerate enemy air and ground targets, air-burst and proximity rounds blasted out of a new high-powered 30mm cannon and now .. silent watch attack, 360-degree sensing and drone swarm defeating High Powered Microwave weapons are being added to the classic Army vehicle. Breakthrough levels of autonomy, manned-unmanned teaming, multi-domain connectivity and paradigm-changing networking technologies are also informing critical modernization strategies for the multi-variant, combat-tested Stryker family of vehicles.
As a way to anticipate emerging Army requirements and offer solutions for consideration, General Dynamics Land Systems has built a new “StrykerX” demonstrator vehicle for the service to evaluate. Major industry contributors, such as GDLS, often invest their own dollars to anticipate Army needs or solve key problems for the Army of relevance to future threats and new applications of Combined Arms Maneuver.
“We have added a lot of power that was not there before and we have given the soldier a silent mobility and silent watch. We’ve added 360 SA like we have not done in the past.. We’ve given them the ability to have see-through armor. There is a digital windshield so to speak,” Tim Frostick, Product Manager StrykerX, General Dynamics Land Systems. “We’ve increased the overall crew compartment in the back by 36 inches. This has allowed us to put more seating in, and we’ve increased the communications ability between the driver and the commander.”
These innovations, both individually and collectively operating in coordination with one another, introduce new tactical possibilities previously unavailable for soldiers operating in a Stryker. A “digital windshield” enabling “see-through” armor enables infantry and crew to operate with an entirely new level of access to time-sensitive threat data, target identification and intelligence information during combat. Perhaps enemy attackers emerging from obscured positions on one side of the vehicle, they could much more easily be identified by soldiers in position to respond or counterattack more safely. As part of this, AI-enabled computing is increasingly able to organize and analyze incoming sensor data at the point of collection, saving time, increasing efficiency and offering counterattack options in seconds. Perhaps video data is arriving through a data link from an overhead drone, or satellite-collected force location information is collected through GPS all while communications and time-sensitive data is sent from a RF signal in the form of a radio or mobile ground-radar system? Common technical standards, relying in part on on-board gateways able to essentially “translate” or “convert” data from one transport layer format to another, allows a modern Stryker to operate as a massive weapons system as well as a critical mobile “node” within a broader, multi-domain combat network.
This kind of high-speed intelligence collection and data processing also greatly supports the StrykerX’s intent to enable real-time, multi-domain networking with robotic vehicles, attack drones, nearby armored vehicles, dismounted forces and even fighter jets and helicopters.
“We have really increased the manned-unmanned teaming element..not just from the drones but also robotic elements around the unit itself. With the increase in power and computing we have been able to really increase our ability to do things like that,” Frostick said.
