We were working on Land Warrior in 2000 with the Airborne Land Warrior Test Platoon.
They had scaled things down so the batteries no longer looked like R2D2’s guts exploding out of a buttpack, like in 1994-1995.
They built the GPS, computer, and Radio into a small, ruggedized aluminum case box that was embedded in a newer version of the LBV.
There was an umbilical that came up behind your neck into the MICH Helmet, with a sleeve that routed it to your Helmet-Mounted Display, so you could see the menu, combat camera, GPS, etc.
There was an elastomer ruggedized mousepad on the M4 magwell that you used to interface with the computer, which you can’t really see in other photos, but can in this one.
You could do voiceless Polar Plot Call-For-Fire with a LRF on the M4, because there was a digital compass and the system knew your grid to within less than a meter most of the time.
Polar plot is when your position is known, and you have an azimuth and range to the TGT.
I started drafting how I wanted the total system to look in 2005 while I was in Europe, because I’ve always hated NV tubes hanging off my helmet or head. I assumed the processing power necessary for sufficient latency digital NV and thermal could place small aperture sensors on the helmet in conformal sensor apertures, then pipe the signals through the processor and into the HMD visor.
Luckey did something very smart though by having the glasses separate from the helmet, so soft skills personnel can do assisted manual functions with visual cues.
Very sick system if you know what you’re looking at. The acoustic focusing feature is brutal.
