FIELD EXPEDIENT


A BOAR is BORN


Soldiers adapt Capability Set 13 technologies to create a more mobile communications solution for rugged terrain


by Ms. Claire Heininger L 104


TC Al Boyer was like a kid in a candy store. His unit had just been fielded with a batch of new communications technol-


ogies that he was convinced would save lives when his Soldiers got to Afghani- stan. After growing up in the Army using FM radio and paper maps, the battalion commander was energized to see the mil- itary adapt to the battlefield the kinds of digital tools—smartphones, data radios, mapping software—that the civilian world thrives on.


Tere was only one problem: Te packag- ing for all of this technology was a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. Leading a light infantry unit


Army AL&T Magazine


bound for austere, mountainous terrain, Boyer would need to go places that a net- worked MRAP couldn’t.


So he turned a few tech-savvy Soldiers loose with the new capabilities, and the “Boar Battle Wagon” was born.


Named for the “Wild Boars” of the 4th Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 10th Mountain Division (4-10), the unit’s


(Light components from one solution was to


configure a Gator all-terrain vehicle with


of the


company command post kits that had been delivered as part of Capability Set (CS) 13. Te Soldiers added a satellite communications antenna and a


July–September 2013


1-kilowatt generator that originally was intended to charge batteries for their CS 13 handheld devices.


“I can put it in the back of a helicopter,” said Boyer of


the Boar Battle Wagon.


Boyer is commander of the 4-10’s 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment. “If I need to get


to an isolated forward Infantry)


operating base high up in the hinterlands, I can put this thing on a Chinook and fly it to where we need to go, and have almost the same capabilities as I do in one of the vehicles.”


SCALABLE AND TAILORABLE Te Boars’


stroke of creativity was precisely what the Army had in mind


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