The US Army is going digital, but soldiers still want physical backups of their battlefield maps

The US Army is embracing a monolithic integer translator crossed systems and technologies, but that doesn't mean soldiers are fresh to springiness up their physical, analog backups immoderate clip soon.

At a caller experimentation exercise astatine Fort Irwin successful California, soldiers tested caller integer maps and communications systems that Army leaders described arsenic a awesome jump guardant successful streamlining decision-making. But troops said they still wanted physical counterparts for redundancy, ensuring they had fallback plans if web connections were lost.

The exercise, called Project Convergence Capstone, tested astir 100 caller technologies, including aerial and crushed drones, physics warfare capabilities, and the Army's prototype Next Generation Command and Control system, aliases NGC2, itself made up of a big of experimental pieces of hardware and software.

Some of the newest systems that Business Insider saw successful action included NGC2's integer representation application, which allows soldiers to spot the locations of friends forces and weapons successful near real time. During an municipality battle scenario, a worker was seen utilizing the representation characteristic connected his End User Device, a Samsung telephone loaded pinch NGC2 package and worn successful a bearer connected the chest.

"Now I person bully situational consciousness of each of my elements astir the battlefield successful existent time," Capt. Mohamed Elmaola pinch the 4th Infantry Division told Business Insider. "Digital enables maine to get real-time, precise targeting feedback, which has been critical" to the fight.

That doesn't mean Elmaola is giving up his beingness map, which he carried and updated while different soldiers flew a Black Widow quadcopter to measure force positions. The difficult transcript really had immoderate benefits that the integer type didn't.

"My analog transcript is what I conflict and unrecorded off because this gives maine the totality of the communicative of what the force is doing, particularly successful a degraded environment," Elmaola said.

The degradation of the electromagnetic spectrum during the exercise, owed to jamming and different physics warfare effects, reinforced why Elmaola and others kept their beingness maps close. If their EUDs aliases different integer assets went down, they'd request the analog versions to proceed the fight.

The redundancy, Elmaola said, was crucial.

"This should ne'er spell away," he added, pointing to his beingness map.

Other soldiers said beingness maps were acquainted from training. They would usage the integer representation to comparison against and update their analog copies, while besides utilizing it to understand the wide battlefield situation.

Some Army leaders described the usage of caller technology, whether connected its ain aliases alongside analog copies, arsenic coming down to individual preference.

"I find that the measurement we each interact pinch exertion is simply a small spot different, and we each person different preferences," Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, commandant of the 4th Infantry Division, said, adding that immoderate usage cases besides apt came down to really comfortable soldiers were relying connected technology.

Connectivity issues and the request for redundancy were awesome themes crossed the exercise, arsenic the Army tested caller integer technologies against electronic warfare and soldiers continued to conflict erstwhile those systems weren't working. Some soldiers said systems for illustration NGC2 could still activity successful constricted capacities while nether jamming, while others said connectivity problems had wholly trim disconnected their access.

Army leaders and soldiers said feedback from the exercise, peculiarly connected really systems performed and what soldiers recovered astir useful, was cardinal to moving forward. The reappraisal process will attraction connected cardinal questions astir what systems were intended to do and whether they met those goals.

"It is astir apt the astir captious point that we're doing here, is taking observations and answering questions that we came successful present to answer," Brig. Gen. Daniel Hibner, caput of the Army Joint Modernization Command, said.