Page 96 - The Royal Lancers Chapka 2018

94 REGIMENTAL JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL LANCERS (QUEEN ELIZABETHS’ OWN) Delivering the iPhone Moment to the Combat Soldier
Returning from the post of CJ33 Crisis Operations Officer in Kabul, Glasgow saw fit to send me back to Army Head- quarters. My posting had stated I was off to Head of Capability Ground Manoeuvre to mix it with the other Combat Arms but a hasty call from my desk officer let me know that both myself and my future project had been moved downstairs to the Directorate of Information, the very place I had started out before another tour of Afghanistan.
D Info is a great place to work, and although it has a low popula- tion of Combat Arms the Royal Signals who make up the bulk of it are forward leaning and highly skilled. I took over the role of managing dismounted situational awareness, a programme to solve the problem of: ‘The jaw dropping capability gap for the men and women tasked with the dirty and dangerous work of close combat’ (Director Combat 2013).
Having re-shaped the programme, which was officially paused for two years until April 19, myself and a team of very commit- ted personnel from the Soldier Technology and Special Projects, the Infantry Trials and Development Unit and other stakehold- ers from industry, contractors and specialist users have been hard at work seeking to prove that there is a technically valid approach to the problem that we can go to industry to solve. The Capability Concept demonstrator in 2015 proved beyond doubt
Using Distributed Situational Awareness devices in the field
that dismounted situational awareness was necessary and a force enabler, speeding reaction, reducing voice traffic by 70% and of- ten allowing us to do more with less and reducing the cognitive burden on commanders. The system was tested with a simulated bearer on Operation CABRIT by C Squadron, Queen’s Dragoon Guards and received huge plaudits from those who used it. It also allowed, for the first time ever, true interoperability between US and UK force elements on operations.
2018 and 2019 has seen us running a technical concept demon- strator using equipment loaned from the US and radios we have purchased running a novel waveform from Trellisware which is already in service with the US and other specialist users. These experiments have gone well and will begin again in earnest in February 2019 with a company from 3 RIFLES taking some systems through combat testing. Whilst the programme, like all programmes remains vulnerable to financial and commercial de- mands and the vagaries of the procurement process it is hoped that a pilot will be deployed to the field Army in 2021 with wider scale fielding beginning shortly afterward. What the user will
MOU meeting Edinburgh
Interoperability with USA