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DARPA plans soldier-tagging system for US troops
Lewis Page
The Register
Monday, July 21, 2008
DARPA, the Pentagon boffinry outfit which bestrides the tech world like some mighty, erratic robot colossus with a frikkin laser beam on its head, has made a new move. The plan is to electronically tag US combat soldiers in a similar fashion to criminals under judicial restraint, the idea being that the troops can then be swiftly found and rescued if they get into trouble.
DARPA calls the plan “Individual Force Protection System”, and it intends to have it taken forward by monster US defence contractor Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Apparently in DARPA’s view, “SAIC is the only known source in the case of a follow-on requirement with the in-depth knowledge and experience with the Individual Force Protection System”.
IFPS has already undergone extensive development under a previous contract. It evidently isn’t ready to go yet, though, as “DARPA requires research, development and technical services to complete development”. The research agency issued notice of its plan to go on with SAIC last week.
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According to this presentation (pdf), given last year by DARPA officials, IFPS would consist of a small, three-inch lightweight tag attached to a soldier’s uniform and a variety of vehicle-borne or portable receivers which could locate the tag even amid the busy electromagnetic spectrum of the modern battlefield. The DARPA people believe that there’s no need to have GPS satnav in the tag itself, allowing its battery to last much longer, and that tracking ranges as good as 150km (in line of sight) would be possible.
All this is considerably better performance than current commercial offerings. The IFPS tags could still make sense for US ground forces even if they were fully equipped with systems such as Land Warrior, which provide a lot of digital comms nodes and GPS sets throughout a ground unit.
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