WASHINGTON, 21 Oct. 2007.Quantum3D Inc., a provider of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), open-architecture, real-time visual computing solutions announced that its Thermite Tactical Visual Computer (TVC) was selected by the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research Development and Engineering Command to support the Army's Future Force Warrior (FFW) Increment 2.
The FFW Advanced Technology Demonstration enables the U.S. Army to develop, demonstrate, and test revolutionary warfighting capabilities for soldiers and small teams aimed at reducing soldier fighting load and power requirements while improving soldier protection, lethality, and situational awareness.
The Thermite TVC-equipped FFW systems are currently employed in field trials designed to assess the FFW system effectiveness and to provide feedback for FFW ongoing spiral development. Thermite TVC-equipped FFW systems have been employed in trials at the C2 On-The-Move exercise at Fort Dix earlier this year and will be widely tested in the Air Assault Expeditionary Force (AAEF) exercises at Fort Benning, Ga.
Designed to support graphics, video, and compute intensive, network-centric C2 and C4ISR applications in extended environments, the Thermite TVC family includes models optimized for man-wearable and vehicle-based applications.
For FFW, the Thermite TVC-2.0 man-wearable computer acts as the soldier system's central communications and processing hub that provides the soldier with navigation, C4ISR, IP Radio-based communications, live video display, and other mission-critical information via the soldier's head-mounted-display and 2-way audio subsystem -- designed to provide both the soldier and unit with enhanced situational awareness, collective engagement capabilities, and overall improved mission effectiveness.
"One of the main reasons we built Thermite was to address the growing need for COTS, open-architecture, man-wearable deployed visual computing applications -- and FFW is one of the most important man-wearable systems in development today," says Ross Q. Smith, Quantum3D co-founder and president.
