The U.S. Army’s Program Executive Office Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (PEO STRI) successfully fielded the all-new Soldier Monitoring System II (SMS II) to Army units at Fort Benning, Georgia, June 13-17.
The Soldier Monitoring System (SMS) is the Army’s materiel solution for Soldier tracking, and SMS II represents the next generation in tracking technology.
According to John Lindsey, assistant program manager for SMS, the new technology was selected from a SMS demonstration and is smaller, lighter and more capable than the previous generation, including improved performance and battery endurance.
Lindsey said the initial requirements for SMS goes back to 2011 and the unfortunate death of a Soldier during land navigation training. Following that event, the Vice Chief of Staff for the Army issued a directive mandating Soldier monitoring technology for all individual land navigation training. PEO STRI’s rapid response to this requirement resulted in the fielding of the original SMS.
SMS enables challenging training without curtailing training objectives or realism. It reduces risks to Soldiers when training requires a level of isolation and/or individual execution (e.g., land navigation), by providing real-time Soldier tracking (geo-locations), and automated alerts to include boundary alerts, no-motion alerts and Soldier-initiated alerts. SMS also provides cadre/leadership with technology to virtually monitor Soldiers and maintain enhanced situational awareness.
SMS consists of three components and is tailorable to each individual organization or training requirement. Its components include a monitoring station, mobile monitoring device and the Soldier-worn device.
“A major feature of the new SMS II is its communication redundancies,” Lindsey said. “For example, it has a Bluetooth mesh technology to help ensure connectivity is maintained – an important feature for a system that helps ensure Soldier safety.”
“SMS II must be, among other requirements, rugged, waterproof and tamperproof,” he said. “During evaluation the Soldier-worn device was left at the bottom of a lake for over an hour, dropped 4,000 feet from an aircraft, and there is literally no means to turn the Soldier-worn device off.”
PEO STRI fielded the original SMS to five Army special operations command locations in 2012 and will complete the SMS basis of issue this year. Following this event at Fort Benning, SMS will be fielded at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in July, with additional fielding planned for later this year at Fort Rucker, Alabama, and Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
Lindsey said the SMS program conducted a demonstration in August 2021, and is scheduled to achieve full operational capability in September of this year
SMS is one of hundreds of PEO STRI portfolio programs designed to support the warfighter, increase combat readiness and modernize the Army. These programs are designed to help transform the Army through an integration of next-generation technologies across the Force to enhance the country’s ability to compete globally, deter adversaries and win on all-domain battlefields in an era of great power competition.
U.S. Army Program Executive Office Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (PEO STRI), headquartered in Orlando, Florida, leads a skilled and diverse workforce and works with high-caliber Army partners to enhance operational readiness and support the Army’s modernization efforts by fielding and sustaining the next generation of multi-domain operations testing, training and information operations capabilities.
| Date Taken: | 06.20.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 06.24.2022 08:22 |
| Story ID: | 423677 |
| Location: | FORT BENNING, GEORGIA, US |
| Web Views: | 992 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Army’s New Soldier Monitoring System Makes Field Debut at Fort Benning, Georgia, by Donnie Ryan, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
