Hacker News Reader

Comment by rollypolly | Hacker News Reader

Seems like there's a lot more entertainment potential than military.

I disagree. The ability to have a myriad of information as an individual soldier on the field could prove to be invaluable. Think about squad mates that get separated from groups. With technology like this you could see a top down map over your location what his/her position is and where you are relatively ala a Battlefield 3 or Modern Warfare 3 esque mini map. Also consider the ability to reduce friendly fire by being able to see exactly where an artillery strike is being painted and your relative position to that strike. These are just a few applications off the top of my head, but I think that augmented reality has the potential to dramatically aide the armed forces.

Then they need a lot of smarter military who can integrate this info, while keeping a clear head in the middle of a firefight, and yet be able to follow orders to the death. Soldiers aren't supposed to win every battle. I expect that between the mental load, the cost of deployment, possible data changes by enemy hackers, and simply being able to pick up dead soldier's equipment and use it, that this will never be something for general rank and file infantry, likely just the officers. 99% of usage will be for entertainment.

> Then they need a lot of smarter military who can integrate this info, while keeping a clear head in the middle of a firefight, and yet be able to follow orders to the death.

Not trying to start a flame war, but I believe that modern video games are prepping for that. If you've played any of the modern shooters, you need to be good at keeping an eye on your HUD while tracking targets and navigating through your environment.

those are just the engineering challenges,

you could probably do some sort of reverse retina scan to make sure they're only used by the intended wearer

the threat of hackers applies to any number of technologies currently in use by the military

human causulities are the biggest limitation on the projection of US power, you might as well work on the assumption that you have to emerge from every battle as unscathed as possible

Reply on news.ycombinator.com