[A-List] Full Spectrum Entropy: Cyber-soldiers

["bon moun" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

How to power a cyber soldier
New technology makes them better but leaves them in the dark if batteries
die

By JOHN SULLIVAN, Staff Writer


FORT BRAGG -- Deep in the dark woods of Fort Bragg, Sgt. Dennis Johnson was
trying to find his way. Johnson had been slogging through these woods for
years, trying to make out directions by relying on the glowing tritium
fingers of his compass.

But this time in May was different. Johnson, 36, who serves in the 82nd
Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, was wearing the Land Warrior System,
a multimedia center slung on the shoulders of a humble foot soldier. He
simply looked at a heads-up display attached to his helmet and followed a
digital map, like a banker driving to the beach in a Cadillac equipped with
a wood-grained global positioning system.

"It used to take twice the time and risk to move at night," said Johnson,
an infantryman for 18 years.

Land Warrior represents the new direction for the Army, one that is trading
armor for information.

But the Army's new high-tech information systems have a much more subtle
enemy than warlords in Somalia or drug lords in Colombia: the humble
battery.

Land Warrior is heavy, weighing in at more than 92 pounds including
batteries. The batteries have a relatively short life span, which means
soldiers have to carry extras. They have to change both 2-pound batteries
as often as once a day and are banned from using rechargeable batteries in
combat.

"They're going to have to plug these guys up to Hoover Dam to keep them
moving," said Chuck Spinney, an engineer who works in the Office of the
Secretary of Defense and is a vocal critic of the Army's priorities.

Spinney and others say the problem highlights the challenges of overhauling
the military.

They say the government is still pouring money into gadgets and
multibillion-dollar weapons systems rather than focusing on the basic needs
of soldiers, such as boots, bullets, housing and training. And batteries.
They ask whether the military is manning equipment or equipping men.

"We are still focused on huge-ticket items instead of what these guys
really need," said Chet Richards, a retired Air Force colonel and an author
who writes on military strategy.

The Department of Defense calls the change "transformation," the conversion
of a Cold War-era military built to fight tank battles on the wide plains
of Europe into a smarter, leaner fighting force. Planners imagine a
battlefield where unmanned aerial vehicles can spot and attack enemy
forces. They believe that infantry units made up of soldiers equipped with
Land Warrior's complicated array of cameras, heads-up displays and
computers will give commanders a decisive edge over an array of foes, from
terrorists in Yemen to armored divisions in Iraq.

What commanders can't dictate is how long soldiers can stay in the field
before their batteries die.

The Army acknowledges that simple problems such as batteries are troubling
but says it is developing new technologies that will produce lighter and
longer-lasting power supplies.

Lethal battery change

Most soldiers know about problems with batteries. In Vietnam, soldiers
complained that their batteries would swell in the damp weather and not fit
in their radios. More recently, Special Forces soldiers complained to
National Defense magazine about the lack of lightweight, dependable
batteries. Their colleagues were all too familiar with the trouble a failed
battery can cause.

High on a mountain in Afghanistan near the town of Showali Kowt, a small
group of U.S. Green Berets, perhaps the best-trained and best-equipped
soldiers in the world, were undone last December by a very ordinary device,
a battery costing just a few dollars.

The team, members of the 5th Special Forces Group from Fort Campbell, Ky.,
had been assigned to protect Hamid Karzai, the Afghan leader who was about
to become the country's interim leader.

After 48 hours of intense fighting, only a few pockets of the enemy
remained. The Green Berets asked for an airstrike. An Air Force air
controller used a GPS receiver to target a pocket of Taliban fighters,
relaying the coordinates to a B-52 flying high above. The procedure was
routine. The outcome was not. A 2,000-pound bomb landed in the middle of a
group of Karzai's fighters and a handful of Green Berets, killing three
Americans and more than two dozen Afghans.

The Pentagon would later say the batteries died in the GPS device. The
airman replaced them but failed to recalibrate the receiver, which
automatically defaults to its own location.

War tests power needs

The average airborne infantry unit uses more than 50 electronic devices,
including night-vision goggles, laser gun sights, GPS devices and laptop
computers, all requiring more than 30 types of batteries.

Even without Land Warrior, batteries account for about 30 percent of a
unit's budget and can add about 20 pounds to a soldier's 80-pound pack,
which many soldiers fighting in combat say is already too heavy.

"When we go in, it's with what we have on our back," said Col. Howie Cohen,
commander of the 35th Signal Brigade at Fort Bragg. The 2,363 soldiers in
Cohen's unit are responsible for keeping the four divisions in the XVIII
Airborne Corps communicating. Two of those divisions, the 101st and the
82nd, fought or are still fighting in Afghanistan, where the austere
environment compounds the problem.

"Power out there is always a problem," Cohen said. "If we don't have
batteries, we have no way to get power to run our equipment."

The 82nd tested the Land Warrior System this summer and will be the first
division to get the units, about 30,000 of them, in the next two years. The
project is expected to cost more than $2 billion by 2014.

As ground units such as the storied 82nd rely more on electronic devices,
the power problem increases.

Experts say a sophisticated system such as the Land Warrior will require
more mobile and more reliable power if is to be effective.

"The transition to a largely technology-oriented organization requires
portable power because many soldiers will be carrying a lot of
electronics," said Ron Cialino, 42, chief of the power sources branch of
the U.S. Army Communication-Electronics Command. "To make sure that power
is available in a relatively lightweight, cost-effective battery is a
challenge."

Limits of technology

The military has invested relatively little to find alternative sources.
The result is that little has changed in the world of batteries. If battery
technology advanced as fast as computer technology, experts say, you could
get nuclear power from two AAs.

"Battery chemistry has almost reached the limit of its technological
abilities," said Dick Hooker, a retired U.S. Army colonel and author of a
study on battery technology in the military.

Batteries make power primarily by chemical reaction. It has been that way
since they were invented in the late 1800s. In the 1960s, researchers
started using lithium batteries because of their light weight and ability
to be recharged. Since then, there have been few major breakthroughs.

"Even though the chemistries have greatly advanced, they have always been a
problem due to weight, battery life and lack of reliability," Hooker said.

The Army stopped funding battery research in 1994 and instead shifted the
money to fuel cells. The military said it spends about $20 million a year
on researching environmental issues, including alternative power sources
such as fuel cells, which are years away from field use.

Although Pentagon officials point to the war in Afghanistan as the
embodiment of transformation -- common soldiers equipped with uncommon
equipment -- critics also point to the war as an example of how
ultra-modern weapons systems will not win every battle. In a combat zone
where tanks can't help, good batteries and sturdy boots can.

"Good batteries won't make a difference in the survival of the nation, but
they could in the lives of those defending it," Spinney said.

Staff writer John Sullivan can be reached at 829-4841 or
juslliva@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx