A DAY IN THE SUN


With intuitive access to navigation tools preventing the need to stop and fumble with a compass to discreetly reevaluate their location in the dark, the Rangers executed the land navigation course signif- icantly faster than the Army requires for a traditional five-point course.


“Te Army standard is to find four out of five points in five hours,” said Hayman. “I believe last night almost 90 percent of the guys had five points within an hour, hour and 15 minutes max.”


GET TO THE POINT


IVAS eliminates the need to manually plot points on a map for land navigation. “With just the push of a button, you have an arrow that's in the bottom of your screen and you walk the arrow to your point, so there's no accidentally drifting left or right.” (Photo by Pvt. Daniel Proper, 25th Infantry Division)


“Traditionally, you have five points and you're taking the time to hand-plot them on a map,” said Hayman. “A lot of guys make mistakes plotting on a map. With IVAS, the mistakes are taken away by just inputting the 10-digit grid into the system and then the programmed route populates in front of you. You never have to stop to do a map check or anything like that because, with just the push of a button, you have an arrow that's in the bottom of your screen and you walk the arrow to your point, so there's no accidentally drift- ing left or right. You never use a compass, and even if you need one, you look up and it's in the top of the band. Tat's what helped me a lot, overall.”


24 Army AL&T Magazine Summer 2021


“Te land navigation last night was too easy,” said squad leader Staff Sgt. Jake Croxdale. “It was super intuitive to navi- gate with the guide arrow, because I would just click where I wanted to go, the arrow popped up and I moved out. Being able to access a map by hitting just one button instead of having to look down at a phone or paper allowed me to not stop as much as I normally would, and ultimately execute faster.”


The IVAS heads-up display provides map, compass and navigation tools at the click of a button, not only for individual Soldiers, but it also enables the intercon- nected communication necessary to plan, build, share and execute routes across team-, squad- and platoon-level elements.


“Land navigation was easy, but so was making the route and sharing it with my guys,” said Croxdale. “I created a route and blasted it out and it worked super quickly. We’ve had problems with other products where the connectivity was not as good, but as soon as I sent it to them they had it and we were able to move out.”


While executing the shared route, each Soldier could also see where the others were within their selected element. Te ability to see the location of other Soldiers during the land navigation was a benefit


praised by every level of leadership on the ground executing test operations, from the platoon leader to the platoon sergeant to squad leaders.


“I have command-and-control aspects in my job as platoon leader, so the icons on the map of where everyone's located on the battlefield at any given point in time is super beneficial for me,” said 1st Lt. Luke Huen. “Instead of having to relay to a person to get their exact location, which might change in a matter of seconds, I can just hit a button and I know exactly where they are. It takes away all the guesswork. I think that's by far the best feature.”


Huen recognized the information visibil- ity as an advantage at his operational level, and the platoon sergeant and squad lead- ers echoed his sentiment as well.


“Te good thing about being able to see where everybody is located is that you know where your front line trace is,” said Hayman. “If I'm running a support by fire berm and maneuvering two assault squads, especially in thick vegetation like we were last night, I can look on my map and see and then give more accurate commands off of that. I always know where all my guys are.”


Croxdale added that the situational aware- ness provided by IVAS allowed him to track accurately all eight members of his squad in real time so he knew exactly where each member of his formation was, with just the scroll of a cursor. He explained that their current tools are not carried by everyone in the squad, so the increased visibility allowed him to make more informed tactical decisions as a leader.


AFTER-ACTION REVIEW Te Rangers were also briefly shown the after-action review feature of the IVAS


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124