Peter Newell
The misidentification of friendly forces has always been a problem on the battlefield. In the Gulf War up to 17% of US casualties were the result of friendly fire. In the opening days of Operation Iraqi Freedom 6 Soldiers were killed and 25 others were wounded in action in a single friendly fire incident. In 2004, Ranger Pat Tillman lost his life in a friendly fire incident.
While battlefield tracking technology (Blue Force Tracking or BFT) improved in the years between the Gulf War and OIF, the technology was bulky, power hungry and unsuitable for dismounted operations. By 2010, the BFT network provided real-time locations of vehicles, planes and helicopters, but not for individual dismounts. In a rugged environment like Afghanistan, dismounted Soldiers were ubiquitous and increasingly at risk of being targeted accidentally by their brothers in arms.
This was not a new problem to the Army. In fact they had a requirement and program of record working on a solution called the Objective Control Unit (OCU). Unfortunately the Army had been working on the OCU for over 10 years and had yet to deploy a solution. Meanwhile the iPhone and its Android partner from Google had taken the world by storm.
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