Infantry-21: Switzerland’s IMESS
A number of countries are currently developing “future soldier” kits that attempt to give soldiers the same kind of advanced technologies now going into vehicles, aircraft, etc., including wearable computers, helmet displays, video streaming of night weapon sights, and more. The trade-offs lie in weight, complexity, power overhead, maintenance burden, and cost.
As currently conceived, the wisdom and long-term effectiveness of many of these programs is a matter of debate that will only be resolved by performance in combat situations. The IMESS effort may have an unfortunate acronym in English, but it sits firmly in the mainstream of these programs. The Swiss project’s vendors are also mainstream…
Contracts & Key Events
March 1/11: EADS Cassidian announces a CHF 20+ million (over $21.5 million) contract from armasuisse for IMESS advanced production engineering. The contract takes field test and demonstration work, from 2007 to the present, as a basis for upgrading the existing systems, and adding more production-ready IMESS systems.
The contract also provides for the equipping of Swiss Duro patrol vehicles and Piranha wheeled APCs, and their integration into the IMESS network. The challenge there is that the amount of power IMESS demands is likely to be more than the vehicles can handle. They are already near their upper limits with their existing systems.
Overall, energy efficiency, reliability, and simplification appear to be the common themes of the improvements. Cassidian cites “significantly improved weight and energy balance,” including a “more powerful and energy-efficient ‘electronic backbone’ with reduced components and reliable cables and connectors.” Other sources cite a swap-out of 21.7 kg in older equipment, in exchange for 18.6 kg of new equipment that includes Level 4 ballistic protection (savings: 3.1 kg/ 6.6 pounds). Retained equipment is reportedly 17.6 kg, creating 36.2 kg total. The bad news is that the trial systems reportedly used 8 different battery types, due to the demand for off-the-shelf systems. EADS Cassidian.
Sept-Dec 2008: Further development of IMESS-Radio by Kongsberg, and tests in close collaboration with armasuisse. armasuisse’s Dr. Philippe Schmid, Project Manager IMESS:
“Some functionalities didn’t work. The radio device was in a very early prototype phase when we decided to use it in IMESS. We took a risk as we knew it wasn’t 100 percent ready. However we could work with the system and during the trials it was stable and most functionalities were available and working stable. One situation where it didn’t work was in mounted displacements. As soon as you increased the distance between the systems and above a certain speed limit (significantly below highway speed limit), communications and navigation would not work. In parallel to the field trials, we therefore continued working on the technical issues, including the radio and I can now say that we are not in the red any more.” Clear voice communication and quick data transfers are now possible at speeds higher than 80km/h and distances between vehicles longer than 1km.”
August 2008: Delivery of 25 IMESS-prototypes and 5 equipped vehicles. Followed by field trials in September & October. Source.
Nov 23/07: EADS Defence & Security, through its integrated Business Unit Defence & Communications Systems (DCS), has been awarded has been awarded an exclusive contract with armasuisse, the Procurement, Technology and Real Estate Center of the Swiss Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS), for the prototype phase of IMESS, the future soldier modernisation program, with options for a subsequent industrialisation and first series delivery. EADS DCS will be the prime contractor, while and Sagem Défense Sécurité from SAFRAN Group will be the main subcontractor.
The framework contract includes a first development phase, plus options for series productions worth more than EUR 120 million. A prototype phase will be finalized in September 2008, followed by an optional industrialization phase in 2009, and optional series production phases in 2010 and 2014, according to Swiss procurement bills RP 09 and RP 13. The optional phases are all subject to approval by the Swiss Parliament.
EADS DS is the prime contractor for the German Bundeswehr’s Infanterist Der Zukunft (IdZ) program, which has also been evaluated by Sweden under the MARKUS program. They have also been contracted to develop the Spanish Combatiente Futuro (COMFUT) equivalent. Sagem Défense Sécurité has just delivered the FELIN future soldier system (Fantassin à Equipements et Liaisons Intégrées) to the French Army in October 2007 for technical/operational tests, and will deliver another batch of FELIN systems in 2008.
With firms like Rheinmetall (Canada, France, Germany), Thales (UK, Germany), Selex (Italy, UK), and General Dynamics (USA) positioning themselves in this field, EADS and SAGEM hope that they will be able to leverage their combined wins (Germany, France, Spain) into further wins in Europe and beyond. EADS release | SAGEM release.
Additional Readings
- Soldier Modernisation – Switzerland Tools Up IMESS
- EADS Cassidian – Soldier Modernisation Programme, aka. “Warrior-21.”
- DID – Europe’s 21st Century Infantry Programs.
- Sagem – Sword Light: a sword in the night. Thermal scope.