The Smart Shirt for Wound Detection has been tested by soldiers, airmen and special operations forces recently and could be ready for fielding in the next year, Legionarius chief operating officer and co-founder Dr. Alexander Gruentzig told Army Times.

The shirt was on display at the annual Association of the U.S. Army Meeting and Exposition Monday as one of the recent xTechSearch competition winners.

The government program solicits technology solutions to solve big Army problems and winners receive small business innovation grants to further their research.

“They can detect any kind of wound. The garment detects any type of penetration, anything that can cause massive hemorrhaging,” Gruentzig explained Monday. “We’re trying to decrease the time from injury to point of treatment.”

In recent years, Army medical command officials and others have warned commanders that the “golden hour” response times expected for wounded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan might not be the norm in future large-scale combat.

That means soldiers, even non-medics, will be called on to do more buddy care to treat teammates’ wounds as they happen. And combat medics themselves are likely to sustain more complex injuries in front-line scenarios than they saw in recent wars.

Time is of the essence in combat casualty care. Knowing where and how a fellow soldier has been wounded in seconds rather than minutes can save lives.

The lattice-like web of sensors on the Smart Shirt are woven into the interior of the garment, whether that’s a standard-issue blouse or jacket. The sensors detect when their “web” has been penetrated and relay that information to the “puck,” a business-card sized, one-inch-thick device that currently mounts on the user’s back, near the base of the neck.

The puck then transmits to the Army’s Tactical Awareness Kit — smartphone-based software — and alerts commanders and others on the network that the soldier has been injured, Gruentzig said.

Commanders can see across their formations who is hurt, where and when they were injured, the type of injury and their current and recent vital signs.

Shared imagery on the network will show where on the torso the soldier has been wounded using a digital diagram as a guide.

The system generates a custom QR code that a medic can scan and use to transfer vital data concerning the soldier’s medical condition.

And, Gruentzig said, they’ve developed the system to avoid “false positives.” The hole in the shirt must be 2 mm or larger and the sensors are not triggered by regular wear and tear or body movements.

Sensors are also hardwired to the shirt to make them resistant to electronic jamming, he added.

The company is also putting a series of “bladders” into the shirts that could provide instant compression for wound care in the future. The compression devices would stop blood loss and reduce massive bleeding, one of the deadliest injuries a soldier can receive in combat.

Gruentzig said that the sensing portion of the shirt is now ready for ruggedized tests and evaluation by soldiers and could be fielded as soon as next year.

The wound treatment portion is still under development.

The Next Generation Squad Weapon rifle and automatic rifle variants, chambered in 6.8 mm, mark the first substantial change to U.S. military small arms since the adoption of the M16 in 1964.

The Army selected Sig Sauer to build the weapon and refine the cartridge earlier this year. The company won the Army’s Modular Handgun System contract in 2017, replacing the Beretta M9 that had been in service since the 1980s.

The current program value is slated at $4.7 billion for the weapon contract and another $2.7 billion for the associated NGSW-Fire Control, which was awarded to Vortex Optics and Sheltered Wings in early 2022.

The weapon will replace the M4 and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon for the close combat forces, which includes special operations, infantry, scouts and combat engineers.

But don’t worry, both weapons will still get their own names — the rifle will be called the M5 and the automatic rifle the M250. The Army’s so creative when it names things.

Also, non-close combat soldiers will still carry the M4 and M249 SAW for the foreseeable future. Sorry guys and gals, this one’s for the ground pounders and those pounding the ground with them.

Cheryl Bielamowicz, NGSW program officer, told Army Times that the weapon was scheduled to begin another round of operational tests in September and, upon conclusion, was expected to field to units by early 2023.

The rifle has a variety of features not found or improved on from the currently issued M4.

It features M-lock handguards, a Picatinny Rail, an ambidextrous safety, a left-side charging handle and a collapsible buttstock.

And those little details, the ergonomics, or fit and feel, make a difference, Brig. Gen. Christopher Schneider, head of Program Executive Office-Soldier, told Army Times.

“Soldiers get out behind that weapons system and it is a matter of minutes and they’re proficient,” Schneider said.

The NGSW-Fire Control is a computer-assisted optic that wirelessly links with soldier devices and includes aim correction, a first focal plane optic, a disturbed reticle, a ballistics computer and a laser rangefinder.

Once fielded, the optic will be called the M157.

Even in its most degraded form, no computer, just glass, uses a 1-8x variable optic that exceeds the performance of the existing M68 and ACOG optics now fielded, said Maj. Alexander Kipetz, NGSW-Fire Control assistant product manager.

A quick peek through the scope shows an aim point at the desired range with left and right windage adjustments embedded. The device has every ballistic configuration for all weapons and calibers loaded. So, users could slap the NGSW-Fire Control on their M4s or crew-served machine guns, if needed.

The optic provides cant, inclination, azimuth and temperature data to best match the shooter’s aim point, weapon and caliber combination to get rounds on target.

“You’re putting rounds on target much faster, potentially, than you were in the past,” Schneider said.

Army Times reported in August that the weapon will also include real-time weapon health and readiness through a monitoring system under development by Armaments Research Co.

Poor performance with the 5.56 mm-chambered weapons at great distances in Afghanistan and concerns about Chinese and Russian body armor advances drove a report called the Small Arms Ammunition Configuration Study several years ago. That study identified the need for an “intermediate caliber” that fell between the 5.56 mm and 7.62 mm used in most NATO ground combat units.

The 5.56 mm was too light and could not deliver lethal effects consistently past 300 meters. The 7.62 mm shot farther but fell off in accuracy and energy on target compared to newer rounds. But a simple switch to 7.62 mm for everyone was not in the offing.

The heavier round in legacy weapons was too heavy and put up too much recoil to ensure accurate fire from all shooters.

Developers dipped into the past by selecting a 6 mm-range caliber, which was used by the U.K. and Japanese militaries in the early 20th Century.

For civilian shooters, the 6 mm is comparable to the .270 caliber round commonly used in North American deer hunting.

But that is not the round that the Army designed. With input from the study, the Army Marksmanship Unit, Picatinny Arsenal and a host of other small arms and ammunition experts, officials narrowed down to the 6.8 mm projectile, designed by the Army.

From there, vendors contributed weapon designs built with the new round in mind. Sig Sauer submitted an M4/M16 ergonomic-style weapon common to most assault rifle platforms.

General Dynamics, which later handed over the contract to Lone Star Future Weapons, put up a bullpup design. The bullpup places the magazine well or feed behind the pistol grip in the buttstock of the weapon, which alters the weapons balance and shortens the overall length. It is a design commonly used in some foreign militaries but not traditionally used in U.S. formations.

Textron Systems pushed a cased-telescoped ammunition using polymer casing to lighten the load but was unsuccessful in the process.

The winner, by Sig Sauer, does have a lot of features, greater range and lethality. But it does come at a cost, fewer rounds carried and a heavier rifle, though the automatic rifle is lighter than the SAW it replaces.

M5 shooters will lose 70 rounds and carry another 5 pounds in total weapon, optic and ammo load compared to the M4.

M250 light machine gunners will give up 200 rounds and add 3.6 pounds compared with the M249 SAW load. The M250 is lighter, but the ammo is heavier and the new fire control adds 2.6 pounds to the system, according to officials.

Both Sig Sauer and Lake City Army Ammunition Plant near Independence, Missouri, will manufacture the new 6.8 mm ammunition. Lake City is adding a new manufacturing line for that purpose. It’s expected to be at full capacity by 2025, Brig. Gen. William M. Boruff told Army Times in May.

Starting early this year, the Pentagon also tasked them with sending, so far, $800 million worth of gear, such as cold weather apparel and a variety of other warfighting items, to Ukrainians beating back the Russian invasion of their homeland.

Army Times spoke with the office’s commanding general and a host of its gear experts about a list of major programs.

Joint Effects Targeting System

Maj. Joe Gooch, JETS assistant product manager, showed off the precision targeting tool that now gives forward observers the chance to pack this device in a ruck and operate in solo mode. The JETS has a range of cameras and includes a laser marker, and a precision vertical angle module that contains a series of gyroscopes to detect the spin and curvature of the earth. The laser marker works with the Army’s precision guidance kits, added in recent years to 155 mm rounds and about any other laser-guided round in the inventory.

Coming in at 19.6 pounds and bringing a 72-hour mission battery life, the system has already been delivered to 161 units to date, including the entire 75th Ranger Regiment and two of three brigades at the 82nd Airborne Division in the past year, Gooch said. The next 44 systems are headed to an undisclosed brigade at the 101st Airborne Division in February.

Mostly, the JETS will replace the legacy LLDR2H, a crew-served system too heavy for one soldier that is being phased out over time. The JETS II prototype is under development. Plans include shaving another two pounds or more off the device and switching its navigation software to the congressionally mandated M-code, a military-grade, global positioning system. That system is under draft requests for prototypes, with an anticipated April 2023 award to build the early versions. JETS II could be available to units by 2027, officials said.

Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binocular

The first standard Army-issued binocular night vision has been rolling out to formations for a couple of years now. The ENVG-B is the “best in class” night vision. Basically, it isn’t your old grainy monocular night vision.

The ENVG-B kicked off with a directed requirement, essentially a request approved by big Army to get these things in the hands of soldiers quicker than standard routes. That request sought 10,262 systems. So far, the Army has delivered 9,500 systems and will begin the final batch of deliveries in November, with the 2nd Security Force Assistance Brigade, said Maj. Bobby Lee, ENVG-B assistant product manager.

Once the last of the total seven brigades has received these goggles, it will transition to a program of record, meaning it’s sticking around and available when funds are approved to many other Army units, but mostly for close combat formations like infantry, scouts and combat engineers.

The device is more than night vision, though. It also has a thermal camera, giving the user multiple options to see what goes bump in the night. And it has wireless connectivity that can connect to a weapon’s sight view in the display, and pipe in situational awareness info such as navigation waypoints and team member locations. Running all those programs can put battery life at about four hours, but tests on standard night vision use show up to 40 hours in field trials, Lee said.

A prototype recharging battery is tripling and, in some cases, quadrupling existing battery use to reach that 40-hour mark.

Nett Warrior

A version of Nett Warrior has been helping soldiers navigate for nearly a decade, but newly issued devices will see an upgrade when they get the Samsung S20 tactical smartphone version. The older versions used the Samsung 7.

The device powers Team Awareness Kit or TAK, with maps, overlays and other situational awareness tools.

The new S20s are going to 2nd and 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, and 2nd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, currently, said Maj. Steve Moody, Nett Warrior assistant product manager.

Modular Scalable Vest

For decades, soldiers with nonstandard body sizes, tall and lanky or short and stocky or female soldiers in need of a better fit had to deal with bulky, oversized life protection.

The Army designed and in recent years began fielding the Modular Scalable Vest to tackle both size discrepancies for comfort, performance and safety, and to give soldiers more options for body armor use.

Early models went to the Security Force Assistance Brigades, Army Times previously reported. That was due in part to their nonstandard missions and quick deployments shortly after the units formed.

But more than 6,000 MSVs went to the 82nd Airborne Division in 2021. And that sample has taught the builders of the MSV, now in version 2.6, a few lessons.

Capt. Kim Pierre-Zamora, body armor team assistant product manager, told Army Times that most soldiers go down one size from what they wore in the legacy Improved Outer Tactical Vest.

And they have more options now. On top of the standard sizes, such as medium-regular, three alternate sizes are now available — extra small-short, small-short and small-long.

The vests fit better and give wearers options to scale up or down their protection. The system starts with a soft ballistic combat shirt and layers up protection from there. The shirt works for leader engagements where full body armor might not be appropriate.

Extensive studies show body armor developers that reducing the size to protect vital organs in the torso and adding in a shooter’s cut to better place a rifle in the shoulder helped performance and safety, experts said.

Old IOTVs have not been forgotten.

The Army will repurpose many of the plates in a kind of recycling program. The plates will be cut to the same dimensions as new plates and used in the MSV carrier system.

Next-Generation Integrated Head Protection System

New manufacturing approaches have eliminated holes in the combat helmet, the Next Generation IHPS, that were previously used to attach gear, such as night vision goggles.

That cuts out potential ballistic vulnerabilities, said Capt. Brad McPherson, assistant product manager, head protection team.

Also, the extra outer applique that users formerly had to add to the old IHPS is no longer needed with the next generation version, which is now nearly finished with deliveries.

The Army has sent more than 120,000 NG IHPS out the door.

New gear for aircrews

Old aircrew gear got the job done but sacrificed a bit in comfort and usability.

Maj. Jeffery Timmick, assistant product manager for air soldier systems, told Army Times that a redesigned aircrew helmet, combat equipment and aircrew-specific Nett Warrior tablet should smooth out some of those kinks.

The rotary wing helmet has the same outer shell as its predecessor, but designers pushed the fit forward, which gives the user a 7-degree wider view. The same helmet now has integrated speakers with external microphones, so users don’t have to remove the helmet to hear over the thump-thump of helicopter blades when outside the aircraft.

A new retention strap reduces wiggle and allowed some of the balancing weight to be removed from the back of the helmet, cutting down neck fatigue. About half, or nearly 7,000, helmets have been fielded so far to aviation brigades over the past five years.

The primary survival gear that aircrew soldiers wear has gotten an upgrade too. The flotation device is now down around the armpits instead of near the neck. That gives crews more mobility, Timmick said. The 25th Combat Aviation Brigade out of Hawaii is wrapping up an operational assessment of the new design.

The new design also fits with the Modular Scalable Vest, so aircrew soldiers don’t have to carry a separate body armor and gear carriage system. The harness straps are still there but removable, so once out of the aircraft they don’t dangle and drag on the ground.

A Samsung tablet will replace the Apple device previously in use. That new device will be compatible with existing Samsung tablets and smartphones using the Team Awareness Kit. That way, aircrews can walk into a Tactical Operations Center and seamlessly share data.

Researchers at Combat Capabilities Development Command are also looking at a potential onboard Wi-Fi so that air crews and passengers can share data in the sky.

Cold Temperature Arctic Protection Systems

A lot of the cold weather gear most soldiers used in recent decades was designed and fielded long before they were born.

But new additions to the winter lineup should help soldiers stay warm and dry in even the most extreme weather.

Maj. Ryan Ogden, soldier clothing individual equipment assistant product manager, told Army Times that the CTAPS system is readying a large-scale Limited User Test with the 11th Airborne Corps in Alaska this coming winter.

Those soldiers will have a five-layer system at their disposal which includes a next-to-skin “no melt, no drip” wool-nylon blend.

That blend remains warm even when wet. Whether soldiers are sweating or took a quick ice bath, this should heat them up.

The lightweight hooded and vented insulated jacket uses a metalized coated fabric with aerogel insulation. And it feels a lot like a “woobie” jacket, Army Times noted.

Ogden said the jacket was a “soldier favorite” in early testing.

The third layer includes soft shell uniform tops and bottoms. Layer four is a cold and wet top and bottom for heavy rain and wind.

The fifth and final layer is an outer “extreme condition” layer — think, North Pole excursions. That’s a cold weather parka and trousers with large, glove-accommodating pockets. The hood is also big enough to fit a helmet and associated devices. The trousers have expanded gussets for adjusting over bulky outer wear and body armor.

The Integrated Visual Augmentation System, or IVAS, is a nearly $22 billion program that the Army is developing to bring night vision, thermal vision, tactical edge computing and the situational awareness of a fighter pilot down to the lowest-level infantry soldier. The device will likely be the most advanced single technology ever fielded exclusively to the close-combat, squad-level soldier in military history.

The Army will deliver 5,000 IVAS 1.0 versions and another 5,000 IVAS 1.1 versions this coming year, said Brig. Gen. Christopher Schneider, the Program Executive Office-Soldier commanding general. Previous budget reports indicate the Army will purchase 40,000 devices or more.

The combined 1.0 and 1.1 fielding is a delay from the previous first unit equipped planned date of September 2022, which was delayed from another previous initial fielding planned for late 2021. But the short-term holdup is critical to ensure soldier acceptance of the device, according to Army officials.

Schneider spoke with Army Times about the IVAS program recently, noting the new rollout plan will field the two existing versions and begin developing the IVAS 1.2 version in parallel with those first fieldlings. IVAS 1.2, which will have a new low-light sensor and hardware redesign, is scheduled to field in the fiscal year 2025.

“We don’t want to rush IVAS to the field until it’s ready,” Schneider said.

The Army will send 5,000 IVAS 1.0 devices to units in Training and Doctrine Command, such as the Maneuver Center of Excellence, for use in training, schoolhouses and experimentation.

The 5,000 IVAS 1.1 devices will go to not-yet-identified operational units and can be used in garrison, field training and on combat deployments. Units such as the 82nd Airborne Division, 75th Ranger Regiment and 101st Airborne Division often receive such technology first, due to their unique missions.

The 1.0 and 1.1 versions look similar from the outside. Both have night vision as good or better than most fielded systems. Both also have thermal sights in the same device, present only in one other goggle that’s had limited fielding to a select group of close combat forces, the Enhanced Night Vision Device-Binocular.

Both versions also allow for “passive targeting.” This lets users identify aiming points and targets without being seen by other night vision users.

“If we have to plan to fight a near peer threat, they’re going to be equipped with night vision, too. And if you use a laser, they see a laser too,” Schneider said.

With passive targeting, that’s not a concern.

“They have no idea you’re targeting them until a bullet hits them,” Schneider said.

The challenge is that the IVAS is expected to be more than a night vision goggle. It’s designed to provide mixed reality, information sharing, situational awareness tools and a host of other capabilities to the individual soldier.

“People think of IVAS as a night vision goggle,” Schneider said. But it’s more about learning “how to use the cloud at the tactical edge. How to train with the device, execute missions and mission planning.”

What the Army wants

IVAS is a standalone system that contains situational awareness tools in one package, beyond any of the Army’s current systems, including Nett Warrior, a long-running soldier-borne computer in a smartphone or tablet.

The device also works as a vehicle, ground or air integration tool for dismounted soldiers.

That’s part of ongoing work with soldiers integrating the IVAS with helicopters, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the Stryker, Brig. Gen. Larry Burris, Cross Functional Team-Soldier Lethality director and Infantry School commandant told Army Times recently.

Soldiers using wireless routers in the Bradley were able to see the same view as the vehicle commander, driver or gunner through their optics, Burris said.

But the most success so far, he added, has come with the Stryker.

“You look around and it’s as if there’s no armor on the vehicle,” Burris said, referencing what it’s like to wear the device from the point of view of vehicle occupants. “I turn my head to the right and it automatically detects the camera that’s off the right side of the vehicle.”

And in all platforms, soldiers passed data and used voice communications with the device, he added.

That work has involved PEO-Ground Systems and the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command.

With the current fielding plan, Burris expects to see novel applications and get more feedback from TRADOC and operational units as they use the device.

Mixed reality is a kind of augmented reality common now in gaming devices that places simulated objects, terrain or characters overlaid on the real world. It gives soldiers a tool only available now in laboratories or training facilities.

That feature can be used on the fly, in a barracks parking lot, on a training range or hours before an actual mission for rehearsal.

“We can pipe in ISR feeds into the device, we can scan areas with the device and build 3D models,” Schneider said.

The simulation tech is promising but still needs some work. Schneider said indoor facilities are no problem for scanning, mapping and rehearsals. But outdoor locations challenge the current technology.

If a soldier scans an area, then a car moves, or the sun shifts and shadows change, it can alter a soldier’s view. But, Schneider said, once resolved, a soldier will be able to see a computer-generated avatar that can interact with the real world. That provides a realistic training option that previously required human role players.

Technology limits

But the Army still has some technical hurdles to overcome.

Current tech limitations create challenges to having both a digital low-light sensor and thermal sight in the same device with the level of data fusion, integration and information-sharing that the Army wants.

The legacy technology, known as I2, has been developed over nearly 70 years and uses an analog, tube-based design. That is an extremely capable technology for providing night vision, Schneider said.

“The current I2 systems, high resolution, works really well, but it doesn’t allow us to share or leverage what a soldier sees,” Schneider said. “You can’t employ computer vision software, you can’t employ (Artificial Intelligence) with the analog solution today.”

For example, thermal sights cannot see through glass, but low-light sensors can. Meanwhile, low-light sensors can’t see through dust, smoke or other obscurants, but thermals can. By combining the two, users get the best of both.

After 70 years of fine tuning, the I2 technology has nearly reached its optimum performance levels, Schneider said.

The tradeoff is that the existing low-light sensor and camera works on digital technology. That provides a good night vision capability, to a point. But the existing camera will drop off under dark, less than quarter-moon conditions. The legacy tech can work at those levels, but it does degrade. At a certain point, the digital tech basically stops working.

“We’re trying to replace that technology with something that’s new, we think we’ve finally found a digital low-light sensor that will do it,” Schneider said.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville restated his own commitment to the program and its eventual use, providing some context from his own career as a helicopter pilot, during remarks at the Maneuver Warfighter Conference at Fort Benning, Georgia, on Sept. 13.

“If you flew back when I was flying with night vision goggles in ‘81 they were big, full-face goggles and how we flew with them, I don’t know,” McConville said. “We had weights in the back of our head. It was not very smart, but we weren’t very smart then, we just did it.”

The days of pushing out hard-to-use new tech are no longer the norm, the chief said.

Program delays

The Army planned to have the device to soldiers in 2021, but problems with software reliability, display warping and moisture issues paused the plan. PEO Soldier conducted additional tests through most of the past year.

The Army pushed back release for additional testing, as well as some hardware and software fixes. Those included reducing the originally ambitious field of view to resolve image distortion problems. After further testing and funding approvals, the device release has again been pushed, now to 2023 with versions 1.0 and 1.1.

Most existing night vision goggles have about a 40-degree field of view, meaning you can see about a 40-degree “wedge” in front of the goggle. That does not cover a user’s peripheral vision.

IVAS and Microsoft developers of the HoloLens, the commercial device the IVAS started with, initially sought to double that to an 80-degree field of view.

But image distortion required a scale back to 70 degrees, still nearly twice the existing range, officials previously told Army Times.

A Department of Defense Inspector General’s audit of the IVAS program, released earlier this year, directed developers to seek more soldier input to avoid, “wasting up to $21.88 billion in taxpayer funds to field a system that soldiers may not want to use or use as intended.”

Despite dozens of soldier touch points, the report noted, the Army hadn’t determined how it would measure soldier acceptance of the device.

PEO Soldier spokesman David Patterson told Army Times shortly after the IG report released that officials recognized the importance of soldier acceptance of the goggle, but it was not the only factor.

Soldier feedback was incorporated into numerous design decisions and updates in the prototyping process, Patterson said.

The published IG audit included soldier feedback, but those portions were redacted from the publicly released version.

A test report planned for completion in October could determine the next round of funding. Members of Congress in both chamber’s appropriation committees recommended cuts to the program following previous delays.

The next funding installment in the current plan would be for more than $424 million.

Another report on the most recent reliability fixes and anticipated changes is due in October, officials said.

Changes

The IVAS 1.2 version will see a “form factor” redesign. The current systems use straps to fix it to the user’s face and over the helmet, almost like ski goggles, 1.2 will be helmet mounted, like currently fielded night vision devices.

A cable that in versions 1.0 and 1.1 runs down the front of the user and connects to batteries will be moved to the rear of the helmet off the user’s chest and shoulder. The 1.2 version will also be slimmer and lighter.

The entire IVAS 1.0 system, excluding the radio, is about 3.4 pounds. Of that, 2.4 pounds is on the soldier’s head.

In version 1.2, developers seek to cut that total weight to 2.85 pounds or less, same or better than the ENVG-B, officials said.

Humidity control and moisture problems noted in last year’s review have been fixed for IVAS 1.0 and beyond.

All three versions work with the Family of Weapons Sights-Individual and Rapid Target Acquisition software. FWS-I was included in the ENVG-B fielding and allows users to wirelessly link their goggle to their rifle optic to view targets without shouldering the weapon.

RTA uses software to cue a target within the optic or goggle view, much like what vehicle-mounted soldier systems do. The combination also gives soldiers a “picture-in-picture” view option that lets them see the terrain but also a smaller version of the optic view.

The current ENVG-B lowlight sensor does outperform the IVAS 1.0 lowlight sensor. But an improved sensor is planned for both 1.1 and 1.2 versions, officials said.

A lowlight sensor being examined for 1.1 already exceeds all other individual night vision optics, except for the ENVG-B.

Both Schneider and his predecessor at PEO-Soldier, Maj. Gen. Anthony Potts, repeatedly acknowledged unplanned delays in the program but defended some of those with the ambitious strides the organization is taking on the edges of existing technology to merge all the capabilities into one individual-soldier-borne device.

Despite those challenges, Schneider stressed in his interview with Army Times that the fielded IVAS devices need to work as advertised to achieve soldier acceptance.

“This plan allows that. We are listening, we’re going to fix the camera and we’re going to get the form factor right. We have to get this right for soldier adoption,” Schneider said. “And we’ve got to maintain trust with them that we’re doing the right thing. But we’ve also got to push, push the limits.”

Those 5,000 goggles are part of a not-yet-released Army fielding plan for the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, which is a combined night vision and thermal device with the ability to feed navigation, position, weapon’s sight views and an array of other data to the user.

Brig. Gen. Christopher Schneider, commander of Program Executive Office-Soldier, told Army Times that the device will help the Army get to the tactical edge of computing and situational awareness at the branch’s lowest echelons.

The $22 billion program has had its delays. And a Defense Department Inspector General audit released in April recommended more soldier input into the device’s development.

Schneider’s predecessor, Maj. Gen. Anthony Potts, told Army Times last year that testing had shown some software reliability problems, image distortion and humidity issues within the device.

Through the end of 2021 and through 2022, PEO-Soldier and other Army entities reworked the device to resolve those problems.

The Army accepted delivery of the ruggedized version of the device in August. The original fielding date had been planned for late 2021. A new fielding date has not yet been announced, as of early October.

IVAS’ foundational technology starts with gaming. The Microsoft HoloLens, an augmented reality goggle, is the basic platform. The company has collaborated with the Army since at least 2018 as it adjusts the technology to military needs, adding new cameras and sensors and integrating the device with existing Army tech.

Pre-existing Army technology includes the Heads-Up Display, or HUD. That’s an effort to get soldiers looking out on the battlefield and not requiring them to look down at a smartphone, tablet or other type of device, a current problem for those using the Nett Warrior and Army Tactical Awareness Kit, or ATAK.

In line with the HUD development is the Family of Weapons Sights-Individual, or FWS-I. That technology started with cabling and has now gone wireless. It allows the user to flip between a goggle view, weapon sight view or a picture-in-picture option to see both while using a rifle or carbine.

It lets soldiers poke a weapon around a corner or over a bunker to see what they are shooting at. It can even let soldiers literally shoot from the hip while seeing their target in their goggle view.

By using those pieces of Army tech combined with a low-light sensor and thermal vision, soldiers can see both at night and through obscurants such as dust, smoke and fog.

Both HUD and FWS-I were developed at the Night Vision Labs at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, also home to PEO-Soldier.

And both technologies are incorporated into the most recently fielded night vision device, the Enhanced Night Vision Device-Binocular.

The ENVG-B has fielded 9,500 systems of its original order for 10,262 systems back in 2019, Maj. Bobby Lee, ENVG-B assistant product manager told Army Times.

While the IVAS has struggled to perform in the night vision category due to a new approach to digital-based night vision versus the legacy analog tech, the goggle has added a host of other options for users that go far beyond night vision.

These options include mission planning and rehearsal. Users can 3D scan an area, mapping the spot to then run simulated drills through. PEO-Soldier demonstrated this to Army Times at Fort Belvoir in 2020.

During field tests in 2019, soldiers at Fort Pickett, Virginia, used micro-drone footage fed to the goggle to conduct reconnaissance on a trench line to defeat an enemy opposition force in the training event.

In January, soldiers with the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, out of Fort Stewart, Georgia, used the IVAS inside Bradley Fighting Vehicles to see outside the vehicle, using the Bradley’s cameras.

In August, soldiers did a similar experiment with Strykers and were able to perform the same tasks.

Brig. Gen. Larry Burris, the commandant of the Infantry School and director of the Army’s Cross-Functional Team-Soldier Lethality, told Army Times that they had recently experimented with putting wireless routers in helicopters and were able to have soldiers share data with each other, the crew and other aircraft.

The Integrated Visual Augmentation System, or IVAS, is a nearly $22 billion program that the Army is developing to bring night vision, thermal vision, tactical edge computing and the situational awareness of a fighter pilot down to the lowest-level infantry soldier. The device will likely be the most advanced single technology ever fielded exclusively to the close-combat, squad-level soldier in military history.

The Army will deliver 5,000 IVAS 1.0 versions and another 5,000 IVAS 1.1 versions this coming year, said Brig. Gen. Christopher Schneider, the Program Executive Office-Soldier commanding general. Previous budget reports indicate the Army will purchase 40,000 devices or more.

The combined 1.0 and 1.1 fielding is a delay from the previous first unit equipped planned date of September 2022, which was delayed from another previous initial fielding planned for late 2021. But the short-term holdup is critical to ensure soldier acceptance of the device, according to Army officials.

Schneider spoke with Army Times about the IVAS program recently, noting the new rollout plan will field the two existing versions and begin developing the IVAS 1.2 version in parallel with those first fieldlings. IVAS 1.2, which will have a new low-light sensor and hardware redesign, is scheduled to field in the fiscal year 2025.

“We don’t want to rush IVAS to the field until it’s ready,” Schneider said.

The Army will send 5,000 IVAS 1.0 devices to units in Training and Doctrine Command, such as the Maneuver Center of Excellence, for use in training, schoolhouses and experimentation.

The 5,000 IVAS 1.1 devices will go to not-yet-identified operational units and can be used in garrison, field training and on combat deployments. Units such as the 82nd Airborne Division, 75th Ranger Regiment and 101st Airborne Division often receive such technology first, due to their unique missions.

The 1.0 and 1.1 versions look similar from the outside. Both have night vision as good or better than most fielded systems. Both also have thermal sights in the same device, present only in one other goggle that’s had limited fielding to a select group of close combat forces, the Enhanced Night Vision Device-Binocular.

Both versions also allow for “passive targeting.” This lets users identify aiming points and targets without being seen by other night vision users.

“If we have to plan to fight a near peer threat, they’re going to be equipped with night vision, too. And if you use a laser, they see a laser too,” Schneider said.

With passive targeting, that’s not a concern.

“They have no idea you’re targeting them until a bullet hits them,” Schneider said.

The challenge is that the IVAS is expected to be more than a night vision goggle. It’s designed to provide mixed reality, information sharing, situational awareness tools and a host of other capabilities to the individual soldier.

“People think of IVAS as a night vision goggle,” Schneider said. But it’s more about learning “how to use the cloud at the tactical edge. How to train with the device, execute missions and mission planning.”

What the Army wants

IVAS is a standalone system that contains situational awareness tools in one package, beyond any of the Army’s current systems, including Nett Warrior, a long-running soldier-borne computer in a smartphone or tablet.

The device also works as a vehicle, ground or air integration tool for dismounted soldiers.

That’s part of ongoing work with soldiers integrating the IVAS with helicopters, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the Stryker, Brig. Gen. Larry Burris, Cross Functional Team-Soldier Lethality director and Infantry School commandant told Army Times recently.

Soldiers using wireless routers in the Bradley were able to see the same view as the vehicle commander, driver or gunner through their optics, Burris said.

But the most success so far, he added, has come with the Stryker.

“You look around and it’s as if there’s no armor on the vehicle,” Burris said, referencing what it’s like to wear the device from the point of view of vehicle occupants. “I turn my head to the right and it automatically detects the camera that’s off the right side of the vehicle.”

And in all platforms, soldiers passed data and used voice communications with the device, he added.

That work has involved PEO-Ground Systems and the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command.

With the current fielding plan, Burris expects to see novel applications and get more feedback from TRADOC and operational units as they use the device.

Mixed reality is a kind of augmented reality common now in gaming devices that places simulated objects, terrain or characters overlaid on the real world. It gives soldiers a tool only available now in laboratories or training facilities.

That feature can be used on the fly, in a barracks parking lot, on a training range or hours before an actual mission for rehearsal.

“We can pipe in ISR feeds into the device, we can scan areas with the device and build 3D models,” Schneider said.

The simulation tech is promising but still needs some work. Schneider said indoor facilities are no problem for scanning, mapping and rehearsals. But outdoor locations challenge the current technology.

If a soldier scans an area, then a car moves, or the sun shifts and shadows change, it can alter a soldier’s view. But, Schneider said, once resolved, a soldier will be able to see a computer-generated avatar that can interact with the real world. That provides a realistic training option that previously required human role players.

Technology limits

But the Army still has some technical hurdles to overcome.

Current tech limitations create challenges to having both a digital low-light sensor and thermal sight in the same device with the level of data fusion, integration and information-sharing that the Army wants.

The legacy technology, known as I2, has been developed over nearly 70 years and uses an analog, tube-based design. That is an extremely capable technology for providing night vision, Schneider said.

“The current I2 systems, high resolution, works really well, but it doesn’t allow us to share or leverage what a soldier sees,” Schneider said. “You can’t employ computer vision software, you can’t employ (Artificial Intelligence) with the analog solution today.”

For example, thermal sights cannot see through glass, but low-light sensors can. Meanwhile, low-light sensors can’t see through dust, smoke or other obscurants, but thermals can. By combining the two, users get the best of both.

After 70 years of fine tuning, the I2 technology has nearly reached its optimum performance levels, Schneider said.

The tradeoff is that the existing low-light sensor and camera works on digital technology. That provides a good night vision capability, to a point. But the existing camera will drop off under dark, less than quarter-moon conditions. The legacy tech can work at those levels, but it does degrade. At a certain point, the digital tech basically stops working.

“We’re trying to replace that technology with something that’s new, we think we’ve finally found a digital low-light sensor that will do it,” Schneider said.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville restated his own commitment to the program and its eventual use, providing some context from his own career as a helicopter pilot, during remarks at the Maneuver Warfighter Conference at Fort Benning, Georgia, on Sept. 13.

“If you flew back when I was flying with night vision goggles in ‘81 they were big, full-face goggles and how we flew with them, I don’t know,” McConville said. “We had weights in the back of our head. It was not very smart, but we weren’t very smart then, we just did it.”

The days of pushing out hard-to-use new tech are no longer the norm, the chief said.

Program delays

The Army planned to have the device to soldiers in 2021, but problems with software reliability, display warping and moisture issues paused the plan. PEO Soldier conducted additional tests through most of the past year.

The Army pushed back release for additional testing, as well as some hardware and software fixes. Those included reducing the originally ambitious field of view to resolve image distortion problems. After further testing and funding approvals, the device release has again been pushed, now to 2023 with versions 1.0 and 1.1.

Most existing night vision goggles have about a 40-degree field of view, meaning you can see about a 40-degree “wedge” in front of the goggle. That does not cover a user’s peripheral vision.

IVAS and Microsoft developers of the HoloLens, the commercial device the IVAS started with, initially sought to double that to an 80-degree field of view.

But image distortion required a scale back to 70 degrees, still nearly twice the existing range, officials previously told Army Times.

A Department of Defense Inspector General’s audit of the IVAS program, released earlier this year, directed developers to seek more soldier input to avoid, “wasting up to $21.88 billion in taxpayer funds to field a system that soldiers may not want to use or use as intended.”

Despite dozens of soldier touch points, the report noted, the Army hadn’t determined how it would measure soldier acceptance of the device.

PEO Soldier spokesman David Patterson told Army Times shortly after the IG report released that officials recognized the importance of soldier acceptance of the goggle, but it was not the only factor.

Soldier feedback was incorporated into numerous design decisions and updates in the prototyping process, Patterson said.

The published IG audit included soldier feedback, but those portions were redacted from the publicly released version.

A test report planned for completion in October could determine the next round of funding. Members of Congress in both chamber’s appropriation committees recommended cuts to the program following previous delays.

The next funding installment in the current plan would be for more than $424 million.

Another report on the most recent reliability fixes and anticipated changes is due in October, officials said.

Changes

The IVAS 1.2 version will see a “form factor” redesign. The current systems use straps to fix it to the user’s face and over the helmet, almost like ski goggles, 1.2 will be helmet mounted, like currently fielded night vision devices.

A cable that in versions 1.0 and 1.1 runs down the front of the user and connects to batteries will be moved to the rear of the helmet off the user’s chest and shoulder. The 1.2 version will also be slimmer and lighter.

The entire IVAS 1.0 system, excluding the radio, is about 3.4 pounds. Of that, 2.4 pounds is on the soldier’s head.

In version 1.2, developers seek to cut that total weight to 2.85 pounds or less, same or better than the ENVG-B, officials said.

Humidity control and moisture problems noted in last year’s review have been fixed for IVAS 1.0 and beyond.

All three versions work with the Family of Weapons Sights-Individual and Rapid Target Acquisition software. FWS-I was included in the ENVG-B fielding and allows users to wirelessly link their goggle to their rifle optic to view targets without shouldering the weapon.

RTA uses software to cue a target within the optic or goggle view, much like what vehicle-mounted soldier systems do. The combination also gives soldiers a “picture-in-picture” view option that lets them see the terrain but also a smaller version of the optic view.

The current ENVG-B lowlight sensor does outperform the IVAS 1.0 lowlight sensor. But an improved sensor is planned for both 1.1 and 1.2 versions, officials said.

A lowlight sensor being examined for 1.1 already exceeds all other individual night vision optics, except for the ENVG-B.

Both Schneider and his predecessor at PEO-Soldier, Maj. Gen. Anthony Potts, repeatedly acknowledged unplanned delays in the program but defended some of those with the ambitious strides the organization is taking on the edges of existing technology to merge all the capabilities into one individual-soldier-borne device.

Despite those challenges, Schneider stressed in his interview with Army Times that the fielded IVAS devices need to work as advertised to achieve soldier acceptance.

“This plan allows that. We are listening, we’re going to fix the camera and we’re going to get the form factor right. We have to get this right for soldier adoption,” Schneider said. “And we’ve got to maintain trust with them that we’re doing the right thing. But we’ve also got to push, push the limits.”