Troops in Iraq give thumbs up to Land Warrior - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Troops in Iraq give thumbs up to Land Warrior

Sgt. Daniel Garza never trusted his Land Warrior system during training at Fort Lewis, Wash. But after relying on the digitized ensemble in Iraq, the recon platoon leader now says he wouldn’t go outside the wire with out it.

At Lewis, “I wasn’t a big fan of it, but after using it in combat here I’m all about it now,” Garza said in a telephone interview from Taji, Iraq. “Now when I leave to go on a mission, I wouldn’t leave with out it.”

Garza and more than 200 other Stryker soldiers with 2nd Infantry Division’s 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, have been putting Land Warrior through its first combat test since the unit entered Iraq in mid-May.

Soldiers wearing Land Warrior have a miniaturized radio at their fingertips for sending and receiving voice communications and text messages; a helmet-mounted display with a built-in computer screen for viewing digital maps, reading text messages and target identification; a Global Positioning System for precise navigation; and weapons optics for engaging the enemy day and night.

All of Land Warrior’s components are wired through a series of robust cables to a small computer processor. When used together, soldiers say these systems help them cut through the fog of war with a constant flow of information they’ve never had before.

Part of the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, soldiers from 4-9 trained with Land Warrior through 2006 and elected to take it to Iraq despite the Army’s plans to kill funding for the program in the proposed fiscal 2008 budget.

Funding for the deployment of the system was programmed in prior budgeting.

So far, 4-9 soldiers and leaders maintain that Land Warrior’s assets far outweigh the extra 11 pounds of weight and bulk the system adds to the soldier’s load.

“It’s a great tool for my soldiers,” said Capt. Mike Williams, 4-9’s A Company commander, in a June 22 interview.

While all of 4-9’s 350 soldiers trained with Land Warrior, for now the system is being worn by soldiers down to the team leader level. This allows Williams to see exactly where small units are down to the fire team level of squads in combat.

“I can supervise my soldiers moving three to five kilometers from my position,” Williams said, explaining how that capability doesn’t exist without Land Warrior.

Despite the praise, Williams and Garza point out that Land Warrior isn’t perfect.

Both say they have seen individual Land Warriors go down on combat missions but say the failures haven’t caused major problems.

Garza, and other leaders across the battalion, have received “master warrior” training, which allows them to make fixes on the fly.

“On a mission we can trouble-shoot what is going wrong,” Garza said, describing how each master warrior carries a bag with spare parts and cables for quick fixes.

Williams said the main improvement he would like to see “is the bulkiness of the system reduced.”

Land Warrior is worn attached to the body armor along with all the other gear soldiers carry, such as ammo pouches, first aid gear and water.

This sometimes makes it a challenge getting in and out of the Stryker hatches, Williams said.

Garza agrees.

“The main problem is if I have to get out quickly, sometimes my radio gets caught, but it’s not that bad,” Garza said. “We do a lot of raids, and a lot of times, we have to jump over walls — that is where the bulkiness makes it a challenge.”

While training with the system at Lewis last year, Garza said his main concerns with Land Warrior were its weight and reliability.

“I just didn’t trust it,” said Garza, who admits he now feels completely different.

“It’s much more reliable now.”

And program officials have lightened Land Warrior. The configuration most soldiers carry now, weighs about 11 pounds, said Lt. Col. Brian Cummings, product manager for Land Warrior.

That weight doesn’t include the five-pound weapons subsystem, which consists of a daylight video camera, a multi-function laser aiming device and a lightweight thermal optic. Currently, one soldier per squad is carrying that portion of Land Warrior, which squads can use during overwatch operations and other missions, Williams said.

Land Warrior “weighs like [11] extra pounds, but after a while you don’t even notice it,” Garza said.

Program officials say that reducing weight and bulk of the system remains a constant priority.

“Is it heavy? Yes,” said Col. Richard Hansen, project manager for Soldier Warrior. “But it is not too heavy or they would leave it inside the wall lockers.”

Despite Land Warrior’s early success, the Army plans to cut $300 million from the program as part of the Army’s proposed 2008 budget of $130.1 billion, Army budget officials said Feb. 5.

Program officials are trying to secure funding for the Land Warrior in the 2009-2013 budget years, Hansen said.

Hansen said he has recommended that Claude Bolton Jr., assistant secretary of the Army for acquisitions, logistics and technology, approve Land Warrior for low-rate initial production but delay production until Land Warrior proves what it can do in combat.