MILTRAK gives soldiers the down low on encroaching enemy forces
By Darren Murph 
posted Jul 15th 2007 12:50AM
posted Jul 15th 2007 12:50AM
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]
looks like a tricorder...spock out
Someone please tell me our soldiers lives are not relying on the
platoon sargent not to lose the input sylus...
I wonder what type of encryption this uses or if it has emp shielding.
he's writing "made big mistake...fighting for oil...help!!"
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?
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.
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.
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.....
is it just me or does this name look like the old mind control project called MKultra
i may be mistaken, but don't they mean the 'low down'
Bravo Tango! We are under heavy fire from enemy forces! Anyone seen my stylus?
No no, when we told you to sweep the field for mines, that's not what we meant...
Not to be confused with MILTANK, which is a cow Pokémon.
I read that as 'MILFTRAK'.
Now I'd pony up for one of those quicksmart.