Yeah but say you’re in a tight spot, and you get hungry for a big mac or even a whopper—will the device take your order for you. Granted there would need to be big mac or whopper delivery drones attached to this device and the golden arches couldn’t be too far away. btw that’s always been the biggest problem with Burger King. That chain never had anything as distinctive as golden arches.
Face it. Warfare against a technologically sophisticated opponent is now beyond anything heretofore seen or experienced. If you can be seen, sensed, located or identified, you are as good as dead. Ordnance can be directed with accuracy to virtually anywhere. Especially vulnerable are capital surface ships. Even individual soldiers and small units that can be sensed by the electronic signatures of their own weapons and devices are very vulnerable. What’s more the technology gets more sophisticated and deadly constantly.
I’m all for using technology, but what happens when someone takes out the satellites that this relies on? End up having a bunch guys with 100lbs of kit and batteries that are now useless. Bet most guys in the infantry now can’t even do a resection, or intersection using a map, compass, and protractor to find out where they are on a map. Like my old CSM used to say, back to the basics.
The problem with technologies like this, is that for all the “enhanced capabilities” they bring, they end up really just making things worse.
In combat, your eyes and all your senses combine to allow you a critical edge in detecting the presence and location of the enemy. Putting a screen in front of your eyes causes part of your vision to be blocked and eliminates peripheral vision.
The army just can’t leave well enough alone, the vision screen will have more and more items you wouldn’t need. Higher headquarters will need to “see what you’re seeing”. So they will constantly pinging the soldiers with distracting requests and other messages - “Sitrep due” “send morning report” “need reenlistment pkg”, etc..
As some have mentioned, combat is messy: sweat, dust, mud, rain, snow and other muck will screw up the visor to make it useless. We always fight in crummy places, almost never in laboratories.
A unit depending on these will need a pack full of AA batteries just to make sure that the darn things stay lit through an operation.
I’m reminded about an experiment the army did about 20 years ago at Fort Irwin in the desert, where the soldiers were loaded with high technology situational awareness devices and conducted simulated attacks. The gear included TV cameras on the rifles and weighed a bunch in 110 degree heat. Almost immediately, the consoles went blank because the troops dumped the gear as soon as they started their attacks. The few TV images they got were of other soldier’s butts.
Yep! Also, "short" will be the best description of the time this stuff will have any value about 1-week into a real war with the chicoms or any other all-out ground war.