Interesting Gizmos, Great Soldiers

I spent a couple of days last week at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico metaphorically kicking the tires on the new high-tech gadgets and gizmos the Army plans to field to seven infantry brigades starting in 2011. I came away from the trip -- as I always do when I'm out in the field -- more impressed by the soldiers I met than the gear. (You can see the soldiers and some of the gear in this slide show.)

The Army Evaluation Task Force at White Sands has been testing high-tech systems at White Sands for more than a year and has assembled a force composed of some truly savvy combat veterans and newer troops who look like they should be in band practice, not hanging out in the Tactical Operations Center.

But 20-year-old Spec. Justin Anthony, a military intelligence systems integrator and maintainer, told me he was "way beyond" your ordinary geek and despite his youth already had a degree in electrical engineering capped off by more than a year of military schooling.

Anthony works for Maj. Blanca Reyes, an Iraq combat veteran and intelligence officer for the 5th Brigade Combat Team, which is participating in the tests at White Sands. She told me that the intelligence field attracts soldiers with the kinds of tech skills that Anthony has mastered to manipulate imagery and maps. "All intelligence soldiers are a little geekish," Reyes said.

Sgt. Maj. Chance Brooks, a two-tour Iraq veteran who helps manage planning for the brigade, said he may lag behind in geekiness to some of the younger soldiers but added his combat experience can help those soldiers as they work to refine the systems intended for use in the Army of the near future.

In the midst of the Brigade Tactical Operations Center, filled with video screens almost large enough for a baseball stadium, Sgt. Heather Hubbard, a chemical warfare specialist, engaged in a low-tech task that seems to reach back to World War II: writing operational information with a greased pencil on a large plastic board. "This is dinosaur work," Hubbard readily admitted. But then she pointed out that "systems sometimes fail and it's necessary to have a backup."

Down the road, at the Tactical Operations Center of the 2nd Combined Army Battalion, Maj. Jeffery Gottlieb, the battalion executive officer, coordinates the unit's operations in a nearby combat training village. Gottlieb, a lanky tanker and Iraq veteran, said he signed on with the Army Evaluation Task Force because he wanted to play a role in development of the future Army.

But on the day I visited, he experienced frustration with systems of the today's Army. The test force uses a mix of new communications systems based on developmental radios from the Joint Tactical Radio System for data communications and the Army's standard Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS) for voice communications. Gottlieb could not connect with the unit operating in the village using the voice radios.

To fix the problem Spec. Lori Richards, a 20-year-old signal systems specialist, draped a coil of antenna wire around her neck and climbed a nearby tower to connect a new and higher antenna into the radios inside the Tactical Operations Center, illustrating that no matter how high tech an Army may become, it still needs folks to climb towers and string wire.

Sgt. First Class Blake Summerlin, a tank master gunner who has done combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, served as one of my escorts at White Sands. I learned, once again, that it is always a good idea never to judge a book by its cover or a person by their camouflage uniform. I asked Summerlin what he planned to do after the Army. He hesitated, almost blushed, and then murmured "horticulture." He then said, "But you can't write about that."

But after warming to the subject -- and his plans to finish a horticulture degree when he gets out of the Army -- Summerlin agreed I could write about his passion for plants.

Yeah, real tankers can become horticulturists, just as real geeks can join the Army, and that's just part of what I discover every time I am privileged to hang out with real soliders in the field.