These controllers are inherently familiar to the next generation of potential warfighters before they ever even sign up to serve

Wednesday, October 9th, 2024

American troops will direct future war machines with familiar controllers:

Over the past several years, the US Defense Department has been gradually integrating what appear to be variants of the Freedom of Movement Control Unit (FMCU) handsets as the primary control units for a variety of advanced weapons systems, according to publicly available imagery published to the department’s Defense Visual Information Distribution System media hub.

Freedom of Movement Control Unit (FMCU)

Produced since 2008 by Measurement Systems Inc. (MSI), a subsidiary of British defense contractor Ultra that specializes in human-machine interfaces, the FMCU offers a similar form factor to the standard Xbox or PlayStation controller but with a ruggedized design intended to safeguard its sensitive electronics against whatever hostile environs American service members may find themselves in. A longtime developer of joysticks used on various US naval systems and aircraft, MSI has served as a subcontractor to major defense “primes” like General Atomics, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and BAE Systems to provide the handheld control units for “various aircraft and vehicle programs,” according to information compiled by federal contracting software GovTribe.

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The endlessly customizable FMCU isn’t totally new technology: According to Ultra, the system has been in use since at least 2010 to operate the now-sundowned Navy’s MQ-8 Fire Scout unmanned autonomous helicopter and the Ground Based Operational Surveillance System (GBOSS) that the Army and Marine Corps have both employed throughout the global war on terror. But the recent proliferation of the handset across sophisticated new weapon platforms reflects a growing trend in the US military towards controls that aren’t just uniquely tactile or ergonomic in their operation, but inherently familiar to the next generation of potential warfighters before they ever even sign up to serve.

Comments

  1. Wanweilin says:

    Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “war games”. Not good.

  2. Phileas Frogg says:

    Given what we know about the skill disparities in competitive videogames, the battlefield impact of having particular drone pilots present at a given engagement are going to be massive during this era of warfare, unless something radically changes.

    Using present terminology, and given my persistent enjoyment of competitive Korean Starcraft: Having a random A ranker on the battlefield just isn’t going to cut it once the Lee Young Ho’s and Kim Jung Woo’s of the drone piloting world begin to appear. I imagine that the level of dominance they will exhibit will be similar to that of Manfred von Richthofen, but without the nasty habit of dying because they’re in the heat of battle themselves.

    Whole kill teams deployed to eliminate particular drone pilots in remote/protected areas behind the frontlines…the possibilities boggle the mind.

  3. Jim says:

    This is just a stopgap until the AI killers come online. There won’t be any moderation on aimbotting or wallbanging between sovereign states.

  4. Jim says:

    Drone warfare will settle down into a vastly more granular killer-protector standoff. On the defensive side, the biggest antennae will be repurposed to detect unauthorized drones as small as a grain of rice, and rapid-response drone teams will lurk in algorithmically optimal locations in depth around the all-knowing security blanket.

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