A Look at the 'Land Warrior'

Minnesota Wire & Cable of St. Paul creates the connections used in a computer pack for soldiers. As printed in Pioneer Press on October 25, 2003
Pioneer Press, October 25, 2003, By Jennifer Bjorhus --

The high-tech "Land Warrior" system the U.S. Army is testing for combat includes a wireless land antenna, GPS antenna, wireless laptop, 500-megahertz processor, miniature helmet-mounted computer screen and a rifle-mounted camera that snaps pictures around corners.
But ask 22-year-old Staff Sgt. Andrew Davis what the single most useful tool is, and he'll lift up the M-4 semiautomatic rifle.

"You still have to be able to shoot the enemy," Davis said as he demonstrated the experimental gadget-laden computer pack Friday for a small group at the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce.

The wearable system is still a few years away from being used in combat. But it's an important project right now for St. Paul-based Minnesota Wire & Cable Co. The company designed and manufactured the 26 cables that form the electrical interconnect system on the Land Warrior pack as part of a roughly $2 million contract as a subcontractor for Rochester-based Pemstar Inc.

Minnesota Wire & Cable just bid on a new contract for the second phase of the Land Warrior project. It's also teaming up with St. Paul software startup Soldier Vision to develop vision software to help soldiers identify targets. The program displays maps and target icons on head-mounted computer displays.

Cables may seem straightforward. But the trick, company executives said, was devising cables durable enough to withstand a fast drop out of a helicopter, or exposure to salt water and sand. Earlier cables the U.S. Army experimented with kept disconnecting, forcing the pack's computer to reboot.

"These guys are rolling around in swamps," said Tom Ashenbrenner, who manages Minnesota Wire & Cable's new defense division. The company had sales of $13 million last year, so the contract is important to Minnesota Wire & Cable. It's one of several Minnesota companies cashing in on the boom in U.S. defense spending since Sept. 11, 2001, including Alliant Techsystems in Edina and General Dynamics in Bloomington.

With its various attached elements, the Land Warrior system vaguely suggests a resemblance to the Borg - the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" colony of humanoid drones implanted with mechanical parts.

But even with electronic aids, Staff Sgt. Davis said, a soldier is still a soldier. The pack, which he calls "the first integrated soldier system" is only meant to augment a person's skills, Davis said.

Davis, an elite army Ranger from St. Peter now stationed at Ft. Benning, Ga., was in town for the local Association of the U.S. Army's annual meeting Friday night at the Radisson in Bloomington.

Davis, who has done two tours in Afghanistan and returned from Iraq in May, said his biggest concern with the Land Warrior system is its weight. The pack is not the only thing a solider must carry on missions, he pointed out. The electronics, which include two eight-to 10-hour batteries, weigh about 12.4 pounds.
"It's too heavy," he said.

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