Soldiers field-test technology, innovation at West Virginia mine

LTC Eugene Chu More Toys in the Tool Box the Better!

LTC Eugene Chu
"As Spot, Boston Dynamics’ dog-like quadruped robot, nimbly paced its way across rocky terrain, a large unmanned aerial vehicle silently hovered 100 feet overhead.

In the distance, a pair of AH-64 Apache helicopters could be seen orbiting above the ridgeline. Somewhere in the forest below, 220 soldiers from the elite 101st Airborne Division, who had been airlifted to three onsite landing zones, were taking part in a training scenario. Their mission: Locate and destroy an enemy’s air defense system.

DIRT Days 23 was in full swing April 20 at the Fola Experimentation Facility, a former Consol Energy surface mine complex that produced 105 million tons of coal before closing in 2012. Later repurposed as a military training site by the West Virginia National Guard, the site is now operated in partnership with the Civil-Military Innovation Institute, or CMI2, a nonprofit based in Morgantown.

The weeklong Driving Innovation in Realistic Training event aimed to involve soldiers in developing and field-testing new tactics and technology while taking part in challenging, realistic training exercises. An initial DIRT Days event took place at the Fola site last summer.

“DIRT Days is all about soldier-driven innovation,” said Mitch Kusmier, a vice president at CMI2 and a colonel in the Army Reserve.

“We curate the problems soldiers encounter with equipment in the field and then team up with WVU, the Army Research Laboratory and other partners to come up with solutions that are field-tested and proven to work,” he said.

The idea is to avoid sending newly designed technology and equipment into the field without input from the people who will be using it."...