January 3, 2005: For over a decade, the U.S. Army has been trying to develop a revolutionary new combat uniform for the infantry. The program, called Land Warrior, sought to give the troops better protection, communications and lethality, while at the same time reducing the load (often over a hundred pounds) the infantry have to carry. Initially, the Land Warrior equipment focused on technologies that were not available yet. The early prototypes of the land warrior gear looked like something out of science fiction. Sort of Star Wars Stormtroopers in camouflage colors.
Two things happened to change this program into something quite different First, new technologies began to appear, without waiting for an army research contract, and the troops wanted this new gear. Personal radios, hydration systems, better flak jackets and better camouflage patterns, were among the items that soldiers were suddenly talking about in chat rooms, newsgroups and email lists. The Internet, as it became a major form of communications in the 1990s, brought together all this new gear, and the troops that needed it, in ways the army brass had not anticipated. Unit commanders picked up on this, often by lurking, or participating, in the online discussions (usually without revealing they were an officer.)
This movement merged with another one, the desire for regular infantry troops to get the same access to "whatever they needed" that Special Forces units had long had. The regular infantry units, in light of their exceptional effectiveness in the 1991 Gulf War, felt that they were well trained enough to justify the special equipment budgets, and purchasing authority, that the Special Forces had long had, and used to good effect. When the war on terror came along, senior commanders let the regular combat units have the extra money, and authority, to get whatever new gear was out there, and the troops thought they could use. A particularly compelling reason for this collective decision (by many generals) was the realization that the troops were connected via the Internet, and often buying this new stuff with their own money. Army generals have many skills, and one of them is the ability to see a public relations disaster headed for them. By providing the new money and buying authority, they avoided ugly "Troops Buy Equipment the Army Won't" type headlines. |