The high-tech future for the Army

Today's incursions by high tech into the ranks of the U.S. Army are just the first wave.

The next wave will include a lot more robots and drones, and they'll be smarter and more autonomous than the current gear. They'll communicate better with each other and do more and more of the dangerous legwork now done by flesh-and-blood soldiers, and some of them will be as small as insects. Meanwhile, U.S. forces will start to field so-called directed-energy weapons: lasers that can shoot down incoming artillery rounds, and less-than-lethal "heat rays" designed to disperse crowds.

That's the vision, anyway. The reality isn't so easy. Getting those lasers to be field-ready, for instance, is "a very hard technical problem," says Thomas Killion, the Department of the Army's deputy assistant secretary for research and technology--or more casually, chief scientist.

And the centerpiece of the Army's technological makeover, the ambitious Future Combat Systems program, looks likely to lose a big chunk of hoped-for funding in the 2008 defense budget, currently being debated in Congress.

In a nutshell, FCS--with a development schedule stretching well into the next decade--aims for a complete package of fully networked and brand-new gear ranging from unattended ground sensors to manned and unmanned vehicles, common components and a common operating environment, battle command software, next-generation communications systems and more. As it stands, the Army in July set out its schedule for the first FCS spinouts--a "low-rate initial production effort"--of some gear, including ground mobile radio technology and the non-line-of-sight cannon, or NLOS-C.

Of course, there have been notable tech successes along the way, such as the robots that soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are using to find roadside bombs and other explosives.

Killion--who has a Ph.D. in experimental psychology, a degree from the Naval War College and work experience for the U.S. Air Force--spoke with News.com this week about how FCS fits into the larger scheme of the Army's R&D efforts, how the Army's research efforts tie in with similar work throughout the Defense Department, and what's up with specific tech projects including gear currently serving in Iraq, along with upcoming minirobots and solid-state lasers.