What’s ahead for soldiers in 2010 - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

What’s ahead for soldiers in 2010

The surge in Afghanistan, evolving missions and tighter budgets will shape the year ahead for the Army. For soldiers, 2010 may mean tougher chances at promotion, a new camouflage pattern for uniforms and better gear and training.

Here is the final installment of our three-part series about things to watch out for in 2010.

GOODBYE, IRAQ

By August, the Pentagon hopes to have pulled out all but 50,000 of the 120,000 troops serving in Iraq.

All U.S. troops must be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, under the terms of the security agreement between the U.S. and Iraq.

President Barack Obama’s plan to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan could make this goal a lot more challenging for Army logistics gurus managing the drawdown in Iraq.

For the past seven months, planners in Iraq and Kuwait have been sorting through millions of pieces of military equipment, identifying what will go home and what will be left behind. Now, the priority will be to pull serviceable engineer equipment, mine-resistant vehicles and communications equipment out of Iraq and ship it to Afghanistan.

There are a lot of nontactical vehicles on forward operating bases. In many cases, it would be too expensive to ship them to the U.S., said logistics officials, who are considering selling them to Iraqi forces or civilians.

CHEATING CRACKDOWN

The Army is looking to stop cheating on correspondence courses with new measures expected to be in place by March.

Cheating for promotion points has been an open secret in the Army since 1999, when correspondence courses were computerized, but has been hard to prove. Training and Doctrine Command is looking to nail cheaters and make it harder for others to cheat in the future.

Changes to the Army Correspondence Course Program include:

• More test-sharing sites will be banned from .mil domains.

• Sub courses in the program have been reduced, and test item banks will be established, creating a pool of more than 30,000 answers that will pop up randomly during tests.

• All courses and tests will be put behind Common Access Card servers by moving the material from the publicly accessible Reimer Digital Library to the Army Learning Management System.

• Soldiers will get credit for taking sub courses in only one course category, and later only for those that align with their military occupational specialty.

NEW CAMOUFLAGE

The Army could select an alternative camouflage pattern for Afghanistan by late January.

Equipment officials have been working on the effort since Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., directed the Army in mid-June to look at new patterns after some sergeants told him the Army Combat Uniform’s pattern is ineffective.

Last fall, the Army sent a team to evaluate six patterns in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan.

More than 1,000 photos of various terrain calibrated for different light conditions have been used to create a photo simulation test that involves identifying individuals wearing different patterns at multiple ranges and settings.

Several hundred soldiers were to take the tests through December. Senior leaders plan to decide by late January whether to select a new pattern for Afghanistan.

M4: REDESIGN OR REPLACE?

The Army is considering a major redesign of the M4 carbine, aiming to make the weapon shoot cleaner and longer.

As the Army awaits Defense Department approval of a competition to find a new carbine, officials have identified six fixes intended to address shortcomings in reliability, durability and handling of the M4:

• Adding a heavier barrel for better performance during high rates of fire.

• Replacing the direct-impingement gas system with a piston gas system.

• Improving the trigger pull.

• Adding an improved rail system for increased strength.

• Adding ambidextrous controls.

• Adding a round counter to track the total number of bullets fired over the weapon’s lifetime.

Even if the Army releases a request for proposal to the small-arms industry, it’s unlikely that the service will complete the competition and select a new carbine before fiscal 2013. While there is no set timeline, the hope is to identify in January what changes could be made to the M4, Army officials say.

COMMUNICATIONS GEAR

The Army plans to outfit a Special Forces battalion this fall with the latest version of Land Warrior gear — the service’s wearable command-and-control kit designed to help small units see through the fog of war.

Equipment officials do not know yet which SF battalion will get the high-tech equipment.

Land Warrior, which allows combat leaders to track the locations of their men and view maps through a helmet-mounted computer screen, is in Afghanistan with 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division.

The latest version of Land Warrior will feature satellite communications to supplement the system’s current digital radio network, officials said. This will allow an over-the-horizon capability, so the system is not restricted to line-of-sight communications.

Reliability will be a challenge. The system will have to function for long periods of time when soldiers are out on multiple-day missions away from having any technical support, Army officials say.

The Army will continue to refine the system as it develops the next generation of digital soldier kit, known as the Ground Soldier System.

GSS is scheduled to be ready for fielding to an infantry brigade combat team by 2012.

Previous:

What’s ahead for soldiers in 2010, Part I

What’s ahead for soldiers in 2010, Part II