Gallery: Robot Guns, Combat Facebook: The Tech of the Army's 'Last' Afghanistan Brigade
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The latest robots and high-tech electronic warfare, silently watching over soldiers as they sleep. Rickety but vital helicopters whose pilots devise new tactics to make up for aging hardware. Hand-carried devices that promise to end age-old battlefield dilemmas but end up causing more problems than they solve. These are the most important techs in arguably the most important U.S. Army brigade in the waning months of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. The Texas-based 1st Brigade of the 1st Armored Division is the "last brigade" -- the final full-up combat unit with a major frontline role before American forces in Afghanistan switch to a strictly training and advisory role. 1st Brigade is the beneficiary of a last-minute influx of new and upgraded systems. Some of the basic hardware is decades-old but still proving its worth with new tactics. Other systems are so new that the bugs are just now being worked out. But all of the gear reflects the hard lessons of 12 years of war -- and offers a glimpse of the future as the Army pulls out of one conflict and prepares for others. *Photo: David Axe*
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Release the Kraken! ------------------- Named for the many-tentacled mythological creature, the Kraken is the latest and most fearsome defensive weapon for American bases. Bloodied by [mass insurgent assaults](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/dangerroom/?p=43968) on isolated Afghan outposts, two years ago the Army combined all the most sophisticated cameras, ground-scanning radars, acoustic gunshot-detectors and robotic machine gun mounts into a single, networked system with lots of deadly arms extending in all directions. Packed for transport inside a single shipping container, installed in the center of a walled outpost and monitored by a pair of soldiers with laptops, Kraken "offers the most force protection per cubic foot <href>compared to any other system," according to Tom O'Neill, the Army program manager. First Brigade has the first-ever copy of the Kraken to be deployed overseas.</href> Kraken is mostly autonomous. The mast-mounted radar detects people and vehicles and slews the cameras to follow them. The cameras, positioned alongside the radar, can also be pointed by sonic sensors that detect incoming gunfire and triangulate the source. At present, the two 7.62-millimeter guns, set atop an outpost's walls, are remotely controlled by the operators rather than slaved to the sensors, but Army sources say that could change in the future. At that point the new system will be able to keep watch over sleeping soldiers with practically zero human input. *Photo: Army*
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Trailblazing Robot ------------------ Every few weeks 1st Brigade's forces will converge along with Afghan troops for so-called "clearance operations," flooding some isolated village with troops and equipment in a bid to flush out insurgents. Clearance ops are dangerous. Any village neglected by U.S. and Afghan troops for weeks or months at a time is likely to be heavily booby-trapped with buried bombs -- too many for any minerolling M-ATV to handle. To reinforce the vehicle-mounted rollers, 1st Brigade can call in the Doking, a tractor-size robot with tank-like treads and its own bomb-triggering mineroller. Built by a [Croatian company](http://dok-ing.hr/) specializing in finding and destroying landmines, Doking can be fitted with a variety of attachments, including firefighting gear and dozer blades in addition to the Army-standard mineroller. The five-ton 'bot is steered by a soldier with a handheld controller. "We'll walk right behind it," says Capt. Dennis Halleran, commander of a 1st Brigade company. "It's kind of slow, but it makes movement much safer." *Photo: Army*
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Combat Facebook --------------- The goal for most Army patrols in Afghanistan is gathering intelligence. Panther, a new prototype handheld device fielded by 1st Brigade, helps track every step a platoon takes, neatly arranging location, key events and imagery on a computer display, like a "combat Facebook timeline," according to Spec. Christopher Carroll, a brigade intel analyst. Based on an Android smartphone but without the phone capabilities, Panther is one of several handheld trackers in development by the Army as part of its semi-annual [Network Integration Exercise war games](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/army-data-network-war/all/) in the Texas desert. One soldier per patrol carries the device, which automatically tracks the patrol's location over time while the soldier snaps photos and add text notations. Returning to base, the Panther can be plugged into a laptop or desktop computer to automatically download a step-by-step recap of where the patrol went, what it did and what it saw. Problem is, the software back-end for the new device doesn't always work, making it impossible to download, according to Carroll. He's hoping future versions are less buggy. *Photo: Army*
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The Things They Carried ----------------------- Almost everything they need to attack and defend, the soldiers of 1st Brigade must carry on their backs. To their basic loads of weapons, ammo and body armor weighing 30 pounds or more, the young soldiers add up to another 100 pounds of gear, including radios, night vision goggles, and systems for finding and disabling insurgent bombs -- plus batteries for all these systems. The bomb-defeating gear has steadily accumulated since the first Improvised Explosive Devices struck U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early years of those wars. Today a 1st Brigade squad carries: radio-signal jammers to disrupt remote-triggered bombs, metal detectors for snooping buried metallic bombs and ground-penetrating radar for detecting bombs without metal components. The soldiers are grateful for the protection, but the bomb gear's added weight -- and the tactics for using it -- makes movement very, very slow. On one typical patrol in mid-April, it took one squad more than two hours to walk half a mile. On [another April mission](http://www.offiziere.ch/?p=11922) to apprehend a suspected Taliban commander, brigade troopers moved so slowly that the suspect was able to escape on a motorcycle. *Photo: David Axe*
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Battle Taxi ----------- The [Stryker eight-wheeled armored vehicle](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/army-strykers-afghanistan/) was developed by General Dynamics in the mid-1990s as a speedy, roomy, lightweight battle taxi that could be flown directly into a warzone aboard a C-130 transport. Nearly 20 years later, the Stryker has evolved into something entirely different. It's bigger, owing to bolt-on slats to protect against rockets. It's heavier and slower thanks to a host of new weapons, radios and jammers. It's less roomy now that its bottom hull has been redesigned to better resist buried bombs. And these days it's never, ever, flown into combat. Despite its evolution -- some would so *devolution* -- the Stryker is not unpopular with the troops. It's a smoother, quieter ride than a tracked armored vehicle. And its high-tech systems make the vehicle equally adept at long-range scanning and eavesdropping as it as direct combat. You just don't want to have to sleep overnight in one. One thing the cramped Stryker was *not* meant to be is a motel. *Photo: David Axe*
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Rolling Pin ----------- When it was [originally fielded four years ago](http://www.automobilemag.com/features/news/1007_oshkosh_m_atv_military_vehicle_afghanistan/viewall.html), the Oshkosh M-ATV -- the all-terrain model of the four-wheeled Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected armored truck -- was meant to haul soldiers around the bomb-strewn battlefields of Afghanistan. But 1st Brigade uses the more capacious Strykers for that role, and has adapted the M-ATV for a new mission as a mineroller. In essence, a giant rolling pin. Almost every vehicle patrol 1st Brigade goes on is led by a M-ATV fitted with a two-ton, cylindrical device attached to its front. The roller is heavy enough to set off most buried, pressure-activated bombs -- and extends far enough from the M-ATV's crew cabin that the resulting explosion is unlikely to hurt the occupants. But it will shake them up real good. *Photo: David Axe*
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Aerial Scout ------------ The Army's Kiowa scout helicopter flew for the first time in 1961. The nimble, quad-blade copter is anything but new, but upgrades and fresh tactics have kept it on the frontlines for more than 50 years. The Kiowas patrolling over 1st Brigade's positions in Kandahar are on the bleeding edge of [rotary-wing warfare](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/dangerroom/?p=54818). Fitted with a top-mounted camera plus guns and rockets, the two-person Kiowas can be seen flying in the company of bigger, heavier Apache gunships -- a new tactic in Afghanistan. In years prior, Kiowas flew mostly with other Kiowas, and Apaches with other Apaches. Pairing the two types makes up for each copter's weaknesses. The diminutive, lightly-equipped Kiowas fly at treetop height, spotting targets for the less maneuverable but more heavily-armed Apaches. If the Kiowa spots insurgents, the Apache can unleash its massive firepower. Plus, the Kiowa is small enough to land on roads or in fields so that ground troops can speak face to face with the copter crew without having to use radio -- a useful trick while coordinating complex raids against insurgents. The Kiowa's close proximity to the fighting comes at a cost. One of the scout copters in Kandahar [crashed in March](http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/afghanistan/helicopter-crash-in-afghanistan-adds-to-mounting-loss-1.212115), killing one of its crew. *Photo: Army*
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Slow Biometrics --------------- Keeping tab on suspected insurgents is at the core of the Army's mission in Afghanistan. First Brigade and other units use the [Secure Electronic Enrollment Kit](http://www.crossmatch.com/seekII.php), or SEEK, a handheld iris-scanner, fingerprinting and data-entry system. SEEK is indispensable ... and a huge burden. It can take 20 minutes or longer for a SEEK unit to boot up and register with its wireless network. If a unit is, say, chasing after a fleeing insurgent and crosses paths with other suspected bad guys, it must choose between continuing the pursuit or stopping, setting up the SEEK and registering the new guys to verify their identities. That very thing occurred on a 1st Brigade patrol in Zari district in mid-April. Opting to register the new suspects, the platoon lost track of their original prey. Like many of the technologies the Army has developed over the last 12 years of war, SEEK can be both an advantage and a liability. For better or worse, the Army in Afghanistan in 2013 is defined in large part by its hardware. *Photo: David Axe*
