Likely prevalence of gun/helmet cams in future military?

[ShotokanXL]

Question time again.

I have a scene in my story where a unit of 4 "marines" is deployed to a hostile area for an equipment retrieval mission. It's not the far future, 2059.

The soldiers are wearing a kind of fully enclosed augmented armour - a bit like power armour but they're not in huge exo-suits. I guess in terms of size they would resemble Iron Man from the Avengers (if that gives you an idea).

The question is: how likely is it that the armour incorporates some kind of POV camera that feeds back to base - I'm thinking in the style akin to the Colonial Marines from "Aliens", but not cameras taped onto the sides of their helmets.

Whether-or-not the base has a visual of what the team encounters will dictate later events.

Thoughts?

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

The technology is certainly not an issue, even now. My 26 yo son has a Go-Pro camera he uses to record mountain biking and in another 40-odd years I'm sure it could be just a tiny device built in to the helmets.

The only query I have is how practically useful it would be. If every soldier had a camera then the people viewing the stuff would have to be looking at multiple views, but if only a proportion of the men had them there would be the risk that the one with the camera took a bullet (or whatever) in the first minute and there would just be a blood-stained shot of the sky to look at. Not much use.

 

[ShotokanXL]

The technology is certainly not an issue, even now. My 26 yo son has a Go-Pro camera he uses to record mountain biking and in another 40-odd years I'm sure it could be just a tiny device built in to the helmets.

The only query I have is how piratically useful it would be. If every soldier had a camera then the people viewing the stuff would have to be looking at multiple views, but if only a proportion of the men had them there would be the risk that the one with the camera took a bullet (or whatever) in the first minute and there would just be a blood-stained shot of the sky to look at. Not much use.

Yeah, I was thinking that. In the current version of events the scene plays out without helmet cams. I just didn't want any military types that read it to scoff at the fact that there are no helmet cams in case they were a regular feature right now.
I've read a couple of examples of them being used in the military - the raid on Osama Bin Laden and a case where helmet cam footage was used as evidence in the court martial of a British Royal Marine.
Would such a piece of tech have become standard issue 40 years from now be something that is deployed on an as needed basis?

 

[HareBrain]

The only query I have is how practically useful it would be. If every soldier had a camera then the people viewing the stuff would have to be looking at multiple views, but if only a proportion of the men had them there would be the risk that the one with the camera took a bullet (or whatever) in the first minute and there would just be a blood-stained shot of the sky to look at. Not much use.

But they could easily switch on (say) four to start with, and switch to any others as needed. So I think they would be standard on each soldier's equipment. The cost compared to firearms and body armour would be negligible.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

That's a good thought.

So good I'm not surprised I didn't think of it myself...

 

[Ursa major]

I don't suppose anyone is real-time monitoring the police who are now wearing bodycams. (I'm not even sure if those units do anything but store the images internally.) But even with this, they can be useful for reviewing what has happened: to see how the tactical plan worke out, to see how the enemy reacted, to determine who did what to whom (in case of criminal proceedings).

If real-time feeds were to be available, one assumes that different people might be continually reviewing specific, specialist units' performance, while others might be looking at the performance of sample regular units. But far more may be possible: it could be that, by the time you're thinking of, software may be able to read the incoming feeds and work out what is happening, both at an individual level and over a complete front. Being able to do this and present the... er... salient points to the humans in overall... er... charge would be a definite benefit (assuming the software hasn't learnt how to lie...).

 

[Ray McCarthy]

It's today's tech.
Mostly not streamed but stored due to cost of high altitude drone / aircraft / platform. All drones are streamed continuously. Sometimes they forget about encryption on later satellite links!

The remote viewers/management can get alert from squad leader, start of gunshot / weapon noise or the squad firing and then decide if someone should view in real time. A local commander then can better follow the battle switching between 6 x 6, 3 x 3 views and others like security operators. Some places have very large numbers of security cameras. Tesco's system can identify a bottle of whiskey being lifted and automatically create an alert which can escalate at self or staff checkout. It's the most advanced system with object recognition in retail.

 

[ralphkern]

They're used now in two modes. Streaming and recordings.

Id say in the future a military unit, even at section level would be fairly organic (can self generate a lot of caperbility) and be equipped with everything from micro uavs for reccies and air support to electronic warfare capability. Simple life streaming will be small fry.

 

[Nick B]

I imagine it will soon become standard practice, especially since chasing war crimes and suing military organisations is becoming common practice.
It also brings beneficial training material after ops, not to mention intel that may be missed on the ground.

 

[tinkerdan]

I'm thinking that just like these new tablets and kindles they will be forward and backward facing camera's and that would mean that they would have to have a place they could view the backward because it would be really lame for someone at base to have to radio out a heads up that they have something coming up on their tail. They could also have a third person view with drones.

As to the logistics of having a facility that processes all the data from all the camera's; well those are already in place.

 

[Ursa major]

Processing is one thing; having a facility that understands comprehensively what is being processed and its significance, both to individual grunts and in a number of synthesized bigger pictures, in real time is not possible now. In forty years time, that may be possible and that may be the biggest difference between what is done with body-/head-cams now and in the future. Or perhaps not.....

Is forty years really too short a time to envisage all this analytical capability being made small enough -- and cheap enough -- to allow it to be deployed in the field (turning drones into mechanised troops who are completely aware of their own position and where they fit in their unit/division/corps/army)?

The biggest issue would probably be why one would want such a completely mechanised force, as there are bound to be those who would either not trust it in principle, or would not trust those who get to deploy/use it.

 

[tinkerdan]

That is so true and I wouldn't want to abuse anyone's beliefs on that.

 

[ralphkern]

Processing is one thing; having a facility that understands comprehensively what is being processed and its significance, both to individual grunts and in a number of synthesized bigger pictures, in real time is not possible now. In forty years time, that may be possible and that may be the biggest difference between what is done with body-/head-cams now and in the future. Or perhaps not.....

Is forty years really too short a time to envisage all this analytical capability being made small enough -- and cheap enough -- to allow it to be deployed in the field (turning drones into mechanised troops who are completely aware of their own position and where they fit in their unit/division/corps/army)?

The biggest issue would probably be why one would want such a completely mechanised force, as there are bound to be those who would either not trust it in principle, or would not trust those who get to deploy/use it.

That is certainly one possibility, although one nations force policy would have to be dictated by its postulated threat (eg. who they expected to be fighting). If, for arguments sake, someone comes out with a Terminator, then the opposing side would have to come out with a Terminator killer. Throughout history, that has often taken the form of a nastier version of the original. (Tanks, Battleships, Aircraft).

I'll counter my own point though, and say the majority of wars Western forces have faced have been fought asymmetrically (different types of forces - vehicles and troops versus IEDs and suicide bombers etc). I don't think there's been a true near parity conflict with advanced western forces since the Falklands (maybe GW1 but even then... they were never going to win qualitatively or quantitatively). We'd probably have to look at the Russian campaigns to see recent examples of relatively similarly equipped forces going at it.

But back to the mechanised force, in the not-so-distant future I suspect the any battleground or occupied territory will be swarming with drones and robots and they'll be faster, stronger and more capable than any human based opposition. They'll judge their own targets in line with rules of engagement. (modern fighters can be set to protect themselves and return fire with the human element having to provide a positive command for them NOT to).