With soldiers’ input, gear worth hauling gets fielded
Todd South
Soldiers test the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, an advanced goggle that would put mixed reality with navigation, target identification and other capabilities into troops' view. (Army)
Soldiers are having more of a say in how their kit is designed and fielded than any time in Army history.
In part it’s a way to save money and time by not delivering some wackadoo piece of gear that no soldier will take out of the box, let alone on patrol. They’ll ditch it because it’s too heavy, doesn’t work right or doesn’t fit within the scattering of items that in the past hang off of them like Christmas tree ornaments, each seemingly more of an afterthought than the previous addition.
Instead, in recent years, the Army, through the longstanding Program Executive Office-Soldier and the more recent creation the Soldier Lethality Cross Functional Team, have been adding in actual soldiers, and sometimes Marines, to try out gear in its early stages and give real feedback to designers and engineers.
https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2020/01/09/with-soldiers-input-gear-worth-hauling-gets-fielded/
