Today was day one of the AUSA Winter Symposium in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The convention is a technology enthusiast’s dream, featuring exhibits from nearly every major defense company as well as speeches from the top brass and other Pentagon officials. There is a whole lot going on here that I hope to cover over the next couple days, but I’ll start off with some thoughts on what is clearly the top concern of everyone attending this conference: defeating the IED. The first thing that strikes me from the technology on display here is that the Humvee is pretty much a disaster. The primary weakness of the Humvee is its lack of armor. The only viable solution to that problem was to add armor, in the form of up-armor kits, to nearly every Humvee operating in Iraq. But that solution had a major downside–the vehicle’s weight limit is pretty much maxed out once the up-armor kit is added. Weight isn’t the only constraint on the Humvee. Technologies that aim to counter the IED are extremely power-hungry–from jammers to communications to surveillance, all demand a great deal of electricity. But the Humvee has barely enough power to run the systems that were on board when it was first deployed. Combine the lack of electricity with the excess weight, and you have a vehicle with almost no capacity to adapt to the modern battlefield. (As an aside, I was surprised to learn that upgrades to the Stryker, the Army’s premier tactical wheeled vehicle, have also been constrained by a shortage of electrical power.) So nearly every major company here is trying to hawk some kind of technology either to improve the Humvee’s survivability or to replace it outright, but the emphasis is clearly on replacing it. There are mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles on display, and “technology demonstrators” for the next generation Humvee, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV). But let’s start with MRAP. BAE had two trucks on display, one in a 4X4 configuration and the other in a 6X6. The Pentagon recently (in the last month) ordered 90 MRAPs from BAE for the Marine Corps which will be deployed to Iraq shortly–75 of the 6X6 variant and the other 15 in the 4X4. Both are impressive and appear highly survivable, but they are simply enormous–check out this pic of the 4X4.