MILTRAK gives soldiers the down low on encroaching enemy forces

We've seen a variety of systems designed to better inform soldiers of what's truly going on around them, but a new setup devised by Thales UK weds an advanced GPS module, a digital magnetic compass, a microprocessor, and a "fully ruggedized display" to provide near-real time situational awareness information. Dubbed MILTRAK, this concoction equips field soldiers with a portable display which seems to work an awful lot like your basic top-screen radar (think Counter-Strike), as it displays the positions of "similarly equipped friendly (blue) forces overlaid on a relational display, raster map, or geo-referenced aerial photograph." Moreover, those in battle can purportedly share and follow routes, which enhances communication and keeps platoons from running astray. Heck, they may even forget that the bullets flying around them are real.

[Via TheRawFeed, image courtesy of Army]

[Eric Silverman @ Jul 15th 2007 12:54AM]

looks like a tricorder...spock out

[Harkonian @ Jul 15th 2007 3:55PM]

Someone please tell me our soldiers lives are not relying on the
platoon sargent not to lose the input sylus...

[Dustin Frazier @ Jul 15th 2007 1:46AM]

I wonder what type of encryption this uses or if it has emp shielding.

[loci @ Jul 15th 2007 4:03AM]

he's writing "made big mistake...fighting for oil...help!!"

[enYallione @ Jul 15th 2007 6:54AM]

Do they have any way of keeping the enemy of downing one soldier with this, picking up his gadget and get pinpoint locations to all other close by?

[Jeff @ Jul 15th 2007 3:39PM]

My Guess -

It probably has a thing on it like a screen saver password - ignore it for X-amount of time and it locks.

I'd also suspect that it falls under the same rules as other encoding/encryption, so every day the code key changes for communication between it and other units... so capture one today, and at midnight it stops working.

[Tom Hellier @ Jul 15th 2007 8:11AM]

I bet this won't even be used, I hear british troops prefer to shoot the enemy rather then draw pretty pictures showing other guys where they are.

Meh, it's a good concept, but untill it's inside a soldiers visor, it won't be used...

Think about it.

Shoot back at an enemy shooting at you?

or

Take your eyes off the enemy and start looking at what is essentially a smart phone.

[MrGam3r @ Jul 15th 2007 10:04AM]

yeah i read an article in time magazine about how much soldiers hated gadgets like this. They said it was much easier just to use their eyes and ears rather than craning over a little display. They also said that a lot of the extra gadgets they were carrying added a lot of weight.

I'm thinkin this might be one of those things.....

[adam @ Jul 15th 2007 11:03AM]

i may be mistaken, but don't they mean the 'low down'

[Egfrow @ Jul 15th 2007 11:19AM]

Bravo Tango! We are under heavy fire from enemy forces! Anyone seen my stylus?

[Natedog @ Jul 15th 2007 12:15PM]

No no, when we told you to sweep the field for mines, that's not what we meant...

[HyperHacker @ Jul 15th 2007 3:31PM]

Not to be confused with MILTANK, which is a cow Pokémon.

[Gyre8 @ Jul 16th 2007 4:07AM]

I read that as 'MILFTRAK'.

Now I'd pony up for one of those quicksmart.

[mikejcrowell @ Jul 20th 2007 11:07PM]

is it just me or does this name look like the old mind control project called MKultra