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 wo hundred and twenty-seven years ago, the U.S. Army was created as the force that would fight and win our nation's wars. Meeting that mandate over time has required the Army to evolve by incorporating the latest technological advances into the very fabric of the force. Although change is always difficult, the Army has learned the lesson that it must change to remain a relevant arm of our nation's defense.
The sweep of change is captured by comparing the Armies of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Vietnam conflict, and the Persian Gulf War. As technology has advanced, weapons, uniforms, personal supplies, communication instruments, methods of fighting, and modes of transport have all been modified or even transformed in the effort to optimize the soldier's effectiveness. Given today's technological onrush, it is apparent that the sweep of change in the Army cannot stop. In October 1999, Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki announced a plan to transform the Army to become "a force that is responsive, deployable, agile, versatile, lethal, survivable, sustainable, and dominant at every point along the spectrum of operations, anywhere in the world." This "Objective Force" is to be the transformed Army that meets the complex demands placed on the Army of the future. The Objective Force will be composed of several major programs. Future Combat Systems (FCS), representing changes to ground combat systems, and Objective Force Warrior (OFW), representing changes for the dismounted warrior, are among the largest. Both the FCS and OFW are to be complex systems comprising many subsystems. They will employ cutting-edge technology to achieve a leap ahead, advancing the Army to a new level of battlefield performance for the total combat system and especially for the dismounted soldier. When integrated, the FCS and OFW will form an interconnected sensor-to-shooter network providing commanders with highly processed real-time information and the ability to dominate the battlefield by massing and coordinating devastating firepower. If the individual soldier as a component within this system is to dominate his battle space, he will have to see first, understand first, decide and act first, finish decisively, and survive and endure. The process of providing these capabilities to the Army by 2010 has begun. Crystallizing the vision he Army is firmly committed to transforming itself by incorporating the best possible technology to achieve its demanding objectives. Leading this technology revolution is Dr. Mike Andrews, the Army's chief scientist. In 2001 he commissioned Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to conduct "another look" at the art of the possible for Objective Force Warrior.
The original four panels represented a broad spectrum of thinking on the future and the military. Two of them were made up of the best representatives from such diverse categories as systems integrators, futurists, visionaries, biologists, engineers, human factors specialists, writers, and military experts. Personnel from ORNL formed a third panel, and the Army's Natick Soldier Center in Natick, Massachusetts, formed the fourth panel from expertise in the Army research and development community. While selecting the panel participants, ORNL began to identify the areas that would eventually define the technology presentations to the four panels. The following categories were used: Having been charged to demonstrate the "art of the possible" in the above fields, the ORNL organizers gathered scientists who were assigned the task of researching, teaming with experts in their assigned fields and developing technology presentations for the panels. ORNL brought in the panels for three days of presentations, allowing ample time for the panelists to question the scientists. The panels then reconvened and began three days of facilitated deliberations to develop concepts for the OFW. The panels were asked to create a vision of the "art of the possible," using science and technology for the dismounted soldier in the year 2010; identify the enabling technologies with associated measurable targets (such as weight carried by the soldier); and stretch their thinking to include science and technology investments that the Army could make that would apply to the future warrior of 2018. An interesting innovation was added when ORNL contracted personnel to create illustrations based on the developed concepts and put them into visuals that would accompany text descriptions of the four concepts. On the last day of the sessions the panels briefed Andrews. A week later ORNL formed the fifth panel from ORNL personnel who had participated in the earlier panels and included other scientists, visionaries, and retired military senior officers. The idea was to include the best concepts of the four panels to create a composite vision for the OFW and recommend to Andrews where he could get the best investments using the Army's science and technology dollars. That composite vision has been so well received by Army leadership that it has been adopted as the working vision for OFW and advanced to the next stage: presentation to all industry teams interested in bidding on competing for selection to work toward actualizing the vision. One with the force he four panels all agreed that tomorrow's technology should be harnessed to give the soldier a radically enhanced ability to affect the battle space three dimensionally. This is to be achieved by bringing the total power of all components of the Objective Force to bear, at the right time and space, to meet mission demands. Gen. Paul Gorman expressed the effect the four panels wanted to achieve in eloquent fashion: "The soldier of today is
The OFW vision aims to achieve a twentyfold increase in the soldier's capability to see first, understand first, decide and act first, finish decisively, and survive and endure. The OFW vision identifies five core interdependent concepts that must be developed and integrated if the goals are to be met: The OFW concept aims for overmatch at the levels of both the individual soldier and the unit of action (a functional group of soldiers whose number is not yet determined). Overmatch is to be achieved especially through advances in two key technology areas, collaborative situational awareness and netted fires (firepower). At the concept level, collaborative situational awareness is represented by "knowing what the network knows" and netted fires is represented by "apply the power of the force." Collaborative situational awareness will provide the soldier with unparalleled knowledge--the right information, at the right time, all in a collaborative environment. The OFW will have some type of heads-up display, quite possibly a voice-controlled, stereoscopic pair of images shown on a visor. Through whatever form of display system that is adapted, the soldier will have access to a worldwide database for geographic information. He will have input from other team members, so he will know where they are and they will know where he is, all in relation to the map display. Data from the intelligence network will be fed to his display, so he will know where the enemy is before the enemy can see him. He will be able to get feeds from aircraft or unmanned air vehicles that will enable him to see and even engage the enemy at standoff distances. Of course a major component of this system will be a communications system that is mobile, ad hoc, netted, reliable, secure, and nonline-of-sight dependent. The second component of overmatch is netted fires. For comparison, consider today's level of battlefield firepower coordination. The current process of bringing firepower to bear at a specific time and place works well as long as it is preplanned. The lone soldier guarding a bridge, securing a town, or searching a cave, however, cannot access all the weapons systems of the entire force in a timely manner. The OFW will have that timely access. More than just the application of artillery, missiles, or air-to-ground munitions, netted fires depends on the capability to create massed effects of all available weapons systems, both those of the Army's Objective Force and of cooperating branches, such as the Air Force. Built on the foundation of collaborative situational awareness, netted fires will provide the soldier with an unprecedented capability to call forth the correct type of firepower, on the exact target of choice, at the precise location, and at a time of choosing that the mission demands. Through implementing collaborative situational awareness and netted fires, the OFW vision aims to achieve the benchmark twentyfold increase in capability over today's soldier. Warrior culture and open architecture  espite the frequent incursion of new technologies throughout centuries of warfare, the soldier's human dimensions remain the single most critical component on the battlefield. These human dimensions, encapsulated in the OFW vision as warrior culture, have traditionally been the foundation for the successes of American soldiers.
Similarly, soldiers and their leaders will be the heart of Objective Force units. These trained, disciplined, physically tough, and mentally conditioned warriors
Finally, completing the five core concepts, "open architecture" highlights the technical necessity of designing all aspects of the huge array of technologies so they are readily interfunctional with each other and can be integrated as technology matures. Power to the warrior  roviding electrical power to the soldier in the field is one of the most challenging aspects of the OFW. Today's soldier depends on batteries--heavy, short-lived, low-power batteries. Supplying them to today's soldier is a major aspect of logistical resupply efforts. Tomorrow's soldier will require a long-lasting, high-output, lightweight alternative power source to power his high-technology armaments. No technology can meet those demands at present, but the development trajectory of fuel cells points toward those capabilities and the OFW program is pushing the technology envelope toward meeting them.
The OFW also needs a fighting ensemble (a high-tech uniform or battle suit) that allows him to fight and endure on tomorrow's battlefield. It must protect
Today's combat load, in the range of 100--120 pounds, is essentially the same as it was in World War II. The targeted combat load for the OFW is 40 pounds. Although lighter materials and fuel cells will help reduce the soldier's load, the OFW can achieve such a substantial weight reduction only by off-loading gear to some type of robotic mule. Whether this robotic mule takes the form of a wheeled, tracked, or air vehicle is yet to be determined, but the robotic technology exists to create this critical component of the future warrior. The 21st-century soldier he U.S. Army has embarked on a course of development that will permit it to meet this country's needs well into the twenty-first century. This transformation is critical and timely, because we are at war today and up against an enemy the likes of which we have never before encountered. The United States has always created weapons platforms and systems--for example, the Abrams tank, the F16, the Nimitz class carriers, and Seawolf Attack submarine--that represent overmatch in their respective areas of the battle space.
Objective Force Warrior is the first program dedicated to making the soldier totally dominant in his battle space. By applying cutting-edge technology, the OFW will deliver a leap forward in the battlefield mastery of the twenty-first-century soldier. 
On the Internet Objective Force Warrior Home Page www.natick.army.mil/soldier/WSIT/index.htm Richard L. Stouder is a senior program manager in the National Security Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He retired as a colonel of infantry after serving 30 years in the U.S. Army. |
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