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Troops in Iraq give thumbs-up to Land Warrior

Jun-23-2007 » Filed Under: 4/2 SBCT

By Matthew Cox - Army Times

Sgt. Daniel Garza never trusted his Land Warrior system during training at Fort Lewis, Wash. But after relying on the digitized ensemble in Iraq, the recon platoon leader now says he wouldn’t go outside the wire with out it.

At Lewis, “I wasn’t a big fan of it, but after using it in combat here I’m all about it now,” Garza said in a telephone interview from Taji, Iraq. “Now when I leave to go on a mission, I wouldn’t leave with out it.”

Garza and more than 200 other Stryker soldiers with 2nd Infantry Division’s 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, have been putting Land Warrior through its first combat test since the unit entered Iraq in mid-May.

Soldiers wearing Land Warrior have a miniaturized radio at their fingertips for sending and receiving voice communications and text messages; a helmet-mounted display with a built-in computer screen for viewing digital maps, reading text messages and target identification; a Global Positioning System for precise navigation; and weapons optics for engaging the enemy day and night.

All of Land Warrior’s components are wired through a series of robust cables to a small computer processor. When used together, soldiers say these systems help them cut through the fog of war with a constant flow of information they’ve never had before.

Part of the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, soldiers from 4-9 trained with Land Warrior through 2006 and elected to take it to Iraq despite the Army’s plans to kill funding for the program in the proposed fiscal 2008 budget.

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