RIP 'Fog of War': The US Army's High-Tech Master Plan to Kill the Enemy

Kris Osborn

Security,

Nett Warrior has already been deployed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army is upgrading and more widely deploying a cutting-edge battlefield force-tracking technology for dismounted Soldiers, enabling them to know the locations of their fellow Soldiers and more quickly find, identify, target and destroy enemy fighters.

Called Nett Warrior, the technology is a cell-phone-like device showing graphics on a small, digital moving map identifying fast-moving combat information.

“The power of this is to network the Soldier,” Lt. Col. Adrian Marsh, Product Manager, Ground Soldier System, told Scout Warrior in an interview.

The Army plans to more-widely deploy Nett Warrior, which has already been fielded with operational units, Marsh said.

Nett Warrior has greatly helped forward-deployed mobile infantry units who often find themselves in fast-moving firefights with enemy fighters, Marsh said.

“It provides unprecedented situational awareness at the dismounted level through the map display. The icons show where all the other users are on the battlefield and the device allows for battlefield messaging. Everyone sees the same picture,” Marsh explained. “The battle changes in real time and information can transmit across the force in real time.”

The technology uses a moving digital map display to mark friendly forces, surrounding terrain, enemy forces, targets and other high risk items such as IED locations, Marsh explained.

“As they sweep up into a house, they don’t have to worry about fratricide, because they can see where the other maneuvering forces are. You can track the location of friendly units as you are moving up on a target,” said Jason Regnier, deputy product manager for Nett Warrior.

(This first appeared in Scout Warrior here.)

The concept behind the development of Nett Warrior is to put the Soldier in the center of the network so that he or she is instantly equipped with fast-changing battlefield information. If a mobile, forward deployed infantry unit was taking an enemy building, for example, Nett Warrior would give them instant information about the location of friendly and enemy forces in relation to surrounding terrain.