How Project Polaris is gearing up the brigade by targeting the squad

The home for all things soldier gear is partnering with a host of Army entities on a project to build a better infantry brigade by working from the bottom up at the soldier and squad level.

Army Times spoke with Maj. Gen. Christopher Schneider, commander of Program Executive Office-Soldier, ahead of the annual Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition about the “Project Polaris” initiative.

Coordinating the Army’s many groups that encompass all the parts of a brigade requires significant effort. The coordination between Schneider’s command and others is now considered the service’s Close Combat Integration Enterprise, or CCIE, Schneider said.

“We have never been as aligned as we are today,” Schneider said.

The CCIE includes Program Executive Office-Soldier, Soldier Lethality Cross-Functional Team, Maneuver Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate, Army Research Laboratory and Combat Capabilities Development Command entities such as the Soldier Center, Armaments Center and C5ISR Center’s Research and Technology Integration Directorate, among others.

While the initiative involves a lot of titles and acronyms, its goal is to ensure that when one entity makes a change to the soldier kit, the rest of the organization can understand the ripple effects.

“Most of the equipment today has got to work together,” Schneider said. “We do that with systems engineering — hardware and software and [Tactics, Techniques and Procedures] and the doctrine component.”

By meeting regularly and reviewing a series of initiatives, all the groups can produce common standards that they can share with the defense industry to create products.

A good chunk of structured soldier feedback is coming to the enterprise through the Cross Functional Team-Soldier Lethality, headed by Brig. Gen. Phillip Kiniery III, who also serves as the Infantry School commandant.

If PEO Soldier or another entity has some kit they want to test, Kiniery has the soldiers to do it.

“It’s about that feedback,” Kiniery said.

For example, soldiers under Kiniery’s command may be testing out new night vision devices in the field, but they’re not just evaluating how well they can see in the dark. They’re using targeting lasers and Nett Warrior, a software situational awareness tool, with the devices.

Those soldiers are going to tell Kiniery and others what did or didn’t work.

With more time using the gear, soldiers can provide developers with more feedback.

“We’re talking about the programs and systems being delivered by Maj. Gen. Schneider and his team and how do they integrate into a fighting formation,” Kiniery said.

For PEO Soldier, that’s been reflected in programs started last year such as the Operational Kit Analysis, or OKA, and New Equipment Training.

The OKA project involves several senior noncommissioned officers with expertise in certain areas visiting units and assessing a layout of what that unit would pack for a 72-hour mission.

The team goes through the gear list evaluating what’s required and what’s optional. They then check on what that unit’s soldiers have been trained to use. If there’s a mismatch, they can advise more training or to ditch the gear if it’s not needed.

Their aim is to lighten the load and ensure soldiers know how to properly use their equipment.

The New Equipment Training is another aspect of how PEO Soldier is working with soldiers, by sending equipment experts to the units to show NCOs in the unit how to use the gear and train others on its use.

The team will revisit the unit to assess the effectiveness of the training and whether they’re using the new equipment they’ve been issued.