My Underground Warfare Wish List
mwi.usma.edu
mwi.usma.edu
Batteries and LED bulbs have come a long way in the last 30 years, and the community of civilian cavers would be a good source for suggestions about durable equipment. Ask people in Huntsville, AL - the home of an Army base, rocket scientists, karst topography, and the NSS <https://caves.org>.
(Of course this assumes some kind of connectivity between the headsets of the various members of the fire team, which could itself be vulnerable in various ways. Painting the walls does have the virtue of simplicity, which counts for a lot in these scenarios.)
I'd bet that if this continues (and I presume the military would want to ensure it continues if only for redundancy purposes), that we'll have accurate inertial guidance on our phones in a decade.
Now thing about a soldier underground who might be subjected to explosions nearby, shooting, being shot at, having to dive for cover and these are all things that are going to screw up any inertial guidance system which is why the suggestions of paint or something make a whole lot of sense.
About halfway between Dallas and Austin is Ft. Hood, the Army’s largest base. After WWII, so only a few years after it had been set up in the first place, the Army dynamited a series of caves in the very sparse western section of the base to carve out a massive underground structure for nuclear weapons.
The Army doesn’t use / maintain nuclear weapons anymore, but the bunker has been repurposed into a basically one-of-a-kind underground training environment. Units from all over the world train there. Pretty cool stuff.
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Littl...
That's all to say, these ideas sound great. But the odds that the Army has a combat-loaded Soldier + ruck try to carry whatever comes out of this before fielding it all to the force are rather low. Or, solve power source first.
They keep suggesting ideas like a single battery pack and a power distribution system integrated into your vest. But I think that'll end up very much like '14 competing standards... now 15 competing standards.' You already have systems needing AA, AAA, and CR123A. You can never balance how many you need as well so you're wasting and running out of AAA when you have tons of AA still left.
I also feel terrible when I get back from just a couple of days on the ground and have to recycle (no idea how they recycle them, let's be pessimistic and calling it really throwing away) a KG or more of batteries.
> not sure how it entered the US/UK military lingo
'Ruck' is definitely not UK military lingo! Talking about a 'rucksack' sounds extremely civilian to my British ears.
The UK military term is 'bergen' or 'daysack' or something smaller.
'Rücken' being 'back' and 'Sack' being... 'sack' or 'bag'.
But then add the extra batteries for the current radio system that's most widespread in the force (ASIPs, usually carry 1 to 2), with this 4''x 2'' battery packs for ASIPs that in turn take up a lot of space (carry 3-4 spares), and then extra ammo, and then the 'portable' equipment for optics or the heavy weapon systems that tend to be deemed 'portable'
... there just literally is no. more. room. And then there's some more added.
These types of cool new tech, which are battery powered, are hamstrung by the simple fact of "how do I carry a massive amount of batteries for all this?"
So it in turn puts soldiers and leaders in a really precarious position of either having to fight a tough battle of stating all of the obvious that I said above, getting told to bring it all out anyways, and then not really being able to. So do we hope we don't get asked "where is X-equipment, is it on your person," or do we lie, or do we what?
Since this article came from USMA, it's a good place to lead upstream conversation on this sort of core issue.
There is a lot of work on making a powered accessory rail for rifles though, so that everything on it would share the same battery. I thought that battery would always be on the rifle though.
but really quantify the consumption rate, ~10xAAAs burned over 2 hours of consistent use is dead accurate, and thats 1x piece of equip. So rechargeable or not, the in-mission load is the problem
This could be really bad potentially, I think the average weight of just a normal vest they bring with ammo is between 40-80 lbs.
There would have to be several refactors to reduce the current weight before introducing the weight of batteries. I wonder if you could reduce the weight of bullets for CQB ammo. You don't really need a bullet to travel several hundred yards in a CQB/Tunnel environment. If so, it would make sense to have a special weapons system like a long barreled SAW with a thermal scope.
not a modern combat expert, but this seems like it would also reduce the ability to penetrate armor. 5.56 is already a pretty small bullet, so you would mostly end up reducing the amount of powder.
I think you missed the biggest item you missed is good hearing protection and sound suppression. In enclosed spaces all the normal issues with loud noises (i.e. guns and explosives) are massively magnified. In fact, it would be terrible to bring a dog much less a canary into this environment.
No, because you need to use your susceptible-to-blinding eyes to use the thermal-vision system. Also, of course, the fact that I have blinding & thermal-vision systems doesn't mean that my foe does.
> #4, sound weapons are going to effect everyone in the tunnel, so offense is limited.
That's true in general of acoustic weapons. Presumably if they can be made directional above-ground they might be made directional below-ground — or they could be treated as acoustic 'grenades,' in that they are deployed prior to ingress.
> #10 foam grenades, are less effective for concealment, and ineffective as cover, most outgas toxic and flamable vocs. Existing procedure of collapsing tunnel has neither downside and accomplished with existing, legacy, and improvised tech.
A small amount of slightly-carcinogenic gas beats getting shot. Sealing off a tunnel connected to the one I'm in seems far preferable to collapsing it and possibly my own. It also could make rescuing civilians who've taken shelter in the tunnel system more possible.
> I won't even touch on headlamps, and insisting on an actual live canary.
I'd trust an actual live animal a lot more than I would some lowest-bidder system.
Some of these ideas are half-baked but interesting nonetheless.
On the actual topic at hand, even assuming this technology finds its way into the hands of police forces (racism or not), what's the use case? People hiding in sewers and drainage pipes? Natural cave systems? Underground mall networks in urban environments? The item with the most potential for invasion of privacy in the article is the ground-penetrating radar (when pointed sideways at houses), but that has already been around for a few years, and there is both literature and case law on police using radar in that capacity.