Infantry-21: Switzerland’s IMESS

Swiss militia(click to view full) 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 Warrior-21(click to view full) 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 […]