A week from today, the first combat unit will get new ENVG-B goggles, which combine binocular night vision with computer-assisted cross-hairs linked wirelessly to the rifle. It’s a test case for the Army’s new high-speed approach to modernization.

Textron is not just betting it will win the Next Generation Squad Weapons contract: It’s betting the Army will want to start buying in bulk ASAP. That’s not a bad bet.

Don’t think about the Terminator or Iron Man: Think about Sigourney Weaver’s power loader lifting crates in Aliens.

Army soldiers are testing goggles with an image-recognition system that can automatically spot threats like tanks and warn the rest of the squad — or transmit the target data to a distant missile battery so they can take it out.

After a generation of guerrilla warfare, the Army is issuing new, lighter body armor that can be tailored for a wider range of missions, from plainclothes advisor roles to high-intensity combat. It’s part of a new push to improve infantry equipment, from rifle calibers to targeting optics to augmented reality training, coming from the Secretary… Keep reading →

This kind of effort to get fighter-jock technology to ordinary grunts — who do most of the fighting and dying — has enjoyed some high-profile attention in the last 12 months. The efforts cover everything from developing a new, more powerful longer-range rifle to buying off-the-shelf quadcopters, from adding VR training simulations to eliminating tedious safety lectures.

The Army is just weeks away from awarding contracts to begin buying prototypes of new infantry weapons, with live-fire tests next year.

What should the device show the soldier? “Where am I? Where are my buddies? And where is the enemy?” said Gen. Townsend. “Then other stuff could be optional.”

The catch, of course, is that the Army’s tried to field all these things before — and failed. Why would things go any better this time around? Brig. Gen. Christopher Donahue has an answer for that.