Two hulking armored vehicles sit at the back of the exhibit hall here at the 25th biennial Army Science Conference. On the left, a 1942 Sherman tank, familiar today from countless World War II movies, looks like a giant metal tortoise, slow and powerful, but clearly dated. On the right, a Stryker Armored Vehicle, first deployed in 2003, looks sleeker, faster, like a boxy, bulletproof race car.
The two vehicles are set apart by more than appearance. While the Sherman tank was built entirely to order, on Army specifications, the Stryker combines both custom parts and standard, off-the-shelf hardware. Step inside the crew compartment, and bolted to an armored steel wall you'll see a
"This has a lot of off-the-shelf hardware in it," says Staff Sgt. Jared Sargent, of the Army's Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor in Fort Knox, Ky. The crew of the vehicle has an easier time keeping it running, he says, since the equipment is similar--or identical--to what they're used to installing even at home. They can even log onto the Internet, order replacement parts from CompUSA and have them shipped directly to the front lines. "That's very different from ten or 15 years ago," he says.
It's all part of the Army's new strategy for producing cutting-edge vehicles, equipment and hardware: working with industry instead of dictating to them, using commercially available parts and designing vehicles that can be maintained cheaply and easily.
"It's not the military any more going to industry and saying, 'You will build this,'" says Paul Mehney, a communications officer for the U.S. Army's Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC). "We go to industry and ask them what's already out there that meets our specifications."
Indeed, many of the exhibits at the Army Science Conference feature technology that's familiar to civilian eyes. Swedish telecommunications giant
But there is a limit to how far the Army can go using just commercially available technology. "Everybody likes to believe I can just give all my soldiers a cellphone, and they'll all be able to communicate with each other on the battlefield," says Dr. Thomas H. Killion, chief scientist for the U.S. Army. But cellular technology requires the presence of cell towers, and significant infrastructure to keep it running, making it an unrealistic option. Besides, he says, the realities of war introduce all kinds of technical hurdles that consumers in the U.S. don't have to deal with. "Thankfully, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint don't actively jam one another. But the bad guys will jam us."
And certain military needs also have no commercially available option--like armor and ballistic technologies. "Wal-Mart doesn't sell armor ... and we like it that way," says Killion. These technologies depend on military investment to make progress, he says.
"We the Army recognize that sometimes we need to do it on our own," says Killion. "But where there is an investment that industry has made, we'll use that."