January 26, 2021 | International, Land
By: Jen Judson
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army's new Infantry Squad Vehicle is a cramped ride and offers limited protection from certain threats, according to a recent report from the Pentagon's chief weapons tester, but it still meets the service's requirements in tests and evaluations, the product lead told Defense News.
The ISV “key requirements are being met and we are increasing soldier operational readiness by providing an operationally relevant vehicle that can transport small tactical units to a dismount point faster and in better physical and mental condition for the fight,” said Steven Herrick, the Army's product lead for ground mobility vehicles within the Program Executive Office Combat Support and Combat Service Support.
The vehicle was designed for easy transport to operational environments with the infantry's current rotary and fixed-wing transport platforms. The key performance parameters required that the vehicle's weight not exceed 5,000 pounds and that it fit inside a CH-47 Chinook cargo helicopter. Those requirements “force dimensional requirements only allowing the vehicle to be a certain height, width and length,” he said.
The requirements led to a vehicle that makes it hard for soldiers with all their gear needed for a 72-hour mission to comfortably fit inside and be able to access rucksacks on the move.
The Army assessed three vendors in developmental testing from December 2019 through January 2020. The service chose General Motors Defense to supply the vehicle to the force, with the company beating out an Oshkosh Defense and Flyer Defense team as well as an SAIC and Polaris team.
All offerings were capable of carrying a nine-soldier infantry squad with weapons and equipment during movement, the director of operational test and evaluation said in the report. But the Pentagon also noted the ISV “has not demonstrated the capability to carry the required mission equipment, supplies and water for a unit to sustain itself to cover a range of 300 miles within a 72-hour period.”
The Army, however, has assessed the ISV requirement and solution set is in alignment, Herrick said. The DOT&E report, he said, “indicates a desire to include more equipment than a standard nine-soldier squad would carry on a 72-hour mission.”
This lack of space, the report stated, “may create a logistics and operational burden” and might limit the type of missions and duration for ISVs.
The soldiers that participated in the touch point evaluating the vehicles were asked to bring their Advanced Combat Helmet and Improved Outer Tactical Vest with plates; individual weapon; night vision devices; and ruck with three days' worth of supplies, Herrick said.
“All vendors' ISVs are cramped and soldiers cannot reach, stow, and secure equipment as needed, degrading and slowing mission operations,” the report explained. During tests “soldiers on all ISVs could not readily access items in their rucksacks without stopping the movement, dismounting, and removing their rucksacks from the vehicle.”
The soldier touch point took into account soldier comfort, visibility and ability to execute the mission, Herrick said. This was all factored into the Army's decision to choose GM Defense's vehicle.
“Additionally, no current or planned combat or tactical vehicle allows access to rucksacks while moving to support operator safety,” Herrick noted. “Crew spaces on the ISV are designed to allow mission performance of specific duty tasks.”
Units also lacked reliable communication capability, according to the report, using hand-held or manpack radios between 62 and 300 miles. The ISV does not have a mounted radio requirement. “Communication between the squad leader, soldiers, and the platoon leader was intermittent and not reliable,” the report found.
Because of the concept of the ISV providing an effective aid to insert soldiers into combat operations, the requirements support just what the soldier carries, so there is no mounted requirement yet, Herrick said. That requirement could be added as a growth capability later.
The DOT&E report also noted that the ISV doesn't have an underbody and ballistic survivability requirement, which could mean the unit would be susceptible to certain threats, but the ISV's speed as well as its small, low profile might help deal with those issues. Adding protection to the vehicle would sacrifice the speed the squad needs to rapidly inject itself into operations.
Overall, GM Defense's vehicle had the highest reliability among the three vendors, demonstrating 585 mean miles between operational mission failures. The Army's user requirement is 1,200 mean miles for that situation.
Herrick noted that reliability and maintainability testing was not scheduled or conducted by Army Test and Evaluation Command or the program office, so the calculations used in the DOT&E report were “not supported by traditional [reliability and maintainability] RAM elements, such as scoring conferences and time for the vendor to implement changes.”
The mileage accumulated and referenced in the report was “not meant to evaluate RAM by the Army, but rather to provide the program office and contractor an initial insight on the capability of the system over 500 miles,” Herrick added. The vehicle's RAM testing is scheduled to begin this month, he added..
The service wasn't able to evaluate every aspect of the vehicle before moving into production, but it plans to test the vehicle's ability to be carried by a Chinook during its initial operational test and evaluation this year.
Now that the Army has chosen the GM Defense vehicle, it has already initiated developmental testing that will lead to an initial operational test and evaluation in August 2021 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. That testing began in November 2020.
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By: Todd South The new chief for research in the Pentagon is building an artificial intelligence center, pushing for self-driving vehicles in combat zones and more powerful lasers, and says solving the hypersonic gap means updating testing facilities. Defense Undersecretary for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin testified before the House Armed Services Committee last week, answering questions on a range of gear and procurement questions. But those most relevant to service members included weapons systems on the horizon that troops could see in combat with near peer adversaries. More rapid development will include the use of unmanned ground vehicles in formations. The Army recently announced the 10th Mountain Division and the 101st Airborne Division will have a robotic combat vehicle called the Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport in the ranks this year for testing, which will develop the likely full-fielding gear mule-type robot. Simple tasks, such as delivering food, mail, water and fuel, could be automated sooner than some think, Griffin said. “I think, frankly, we're going to have self-driving vehicles in theater for the Army before we'll have self-driving cars on the streets,” Griffin said. “If that can be done by an automated unmanned vehicle with a relatively simple AI driving algorithm where I don't have to worry about pedestrians and road signs and all of that, why wouldn't I do that?” Griffin pointed to Chinese systems that have been fielded or can be soon fielded that can launch a strike and reach out “thousands of kilometers” from the Chinese shore and “hold our carrier battle groups or forward deployed forces on land” at risk. “We, today, do not have systems which can hold them at risk in a corresponding manner, and we don't have defenses against those systems,” Griffin told the House Armed Services Committee members on April 18. Another Chinese technology threat includes the nation's development of swarm drone technologies to counter U.S. airpower and other strengths. That means getting powerful laser systems up to snuff. But it won't happen tomorrow. “We need to have 100-kilowatt-class weapons on Army theater vehicles. We need to have 300-kilowatt-class weapons on Air Force tankers,” Griffin said. “We need to have megawatt-class directed energy weapons in space for space defense. These are things we can do over the next decade if we can maintain our focus.” Scientists he's been talking with have told him that level of laser power is five to six years away and a “megawatt laser” is within a decade with persistent investment. ‘An unacceptable situation' Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., pointed out that the testing facilities, such as White Sands Missile Range in his state, have scarcely seen any upgrades or improvements in the past two decades, despite leaps in technology for missiles, lasers and other items. Griffin agreed, saying at a low estimate at least 20 such testing facilities across the nation are in the same situation. He said the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency does most of the leading-edge work on hypersonic missile systems and they have exactly one testing facility, a NASA wind tunnel near Langley, Virginia. “This is an unacceptable situation,” Griffin said. He promised to return with budget requests to renovate those facilities to improve testing. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., asked about a new area of focus that has broad-reaching effects: artificial intelligence. Griffin oversees the creation of a Joint Artificial Intelligence Center that would create AI solutions for all the service branches. He deferred on the details but told members that he expected to return with a plan within two months. “We owe the Congress a report, I think, about two months from now on what our A.I. strategy will be. And the JAIC, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, will be a part of that overall strategy,” Griffin said. The plan must consider the 592 projects across the Defense Department that have AI as part of their development. https://www.defensenews.com/news/your-military/2018/04/24/new-pentagon-research-chief-is-working-on-lasers-ai-hypersonic-munitions-and-more/