Remembrance Day — How 24 years of technology in the military shaped my post-service career

For many of us, November is a time when we reflect on the true price of war, how loved ones or friends are no longer with us, and how we wish things were different and they were still here to raise a glass or stand side by side on a Sunday in November when a sea of red poppies is worn with pride.

My career in the military always had a technology part; I would say, a bit of a Marmite relationship. I was in the Artillery and, interestingly, some of the earliest computers were designed to try and solve the gunnery problem of first-round target effectiveness.

The race was on to design a computer that could work out what humans did with a complex book called firing tables, where you had to cross-reference things such as the earth’s rotational spin, the temperature of the air, the temperature of the charge that was going to be sent 15 kilometres in under 20 seconds with an accuracy of 5 meters...

Sadly, these computers were not small enough to fit in the back of a Land Rover, and it was down to the personal pride of the men in the Artillery command posts to convert a 6-figure gird and direction into a ballistic angle and settings required to set the fuze to go bang when it needed to. With nothing but a book of figures and a sliding rule to do it in under 30 seconds or less!

In 1993, I got my first real insight into the massive jump in technology of the early days of tactical-level battlefield communications which were thrust upon us in a new bit of kit called BATES (Battlefield Artillery Target Engagement System).

BATES was a 10kg man-portable box with a 5kg orange and black screen and a ZX81-style keyboard where complex and mind-boggling information had to be input, including the number of subscribers with their logical and physical ID and key time delay.

The downside of all this was that BATES had to be connected to an analogue VHF radio; this reminded me of my childhood, when the good-old ZX81 had to be connected to a tape recorder and the volume set just right or the game would never load. BATES was the same; any slight disruption to the network and we had to start over.

BATES never won the troops over and wasn’t trusted to allow the holy grail of sensor to shooter — i.e. little or no human involvement — to be achieved like the top brass wanted. Thankfully, BATES was left on the shelf to gather dust, which for squaddies like myself, whose main mode of transport was gracefully falling out of aircraft and then having to walk with at a brisk pace carrying everything you need to survive — was a welcome relief.

Only in Bosnia, in 1996, did I ever see it working; back there, it was used as a messaging system passing routine information to the various locations around the country through a complex series of radio rebroadcast stations set up by the Royal Signals.

Early February 2003, whilst in the Kuwaiti desert, was the first time I saw how far behind we were as a military. While every US Humvee had the aptly-named Blue Force Tracker, a real-time system that let them know where every US vehicle was on the battlefield, in colour, with the one aim of preventing friendly fire (or blue on blue, as it was known), alas, the British solution was to paint an orange square on the roof of our vehicles... Sadly, this was not 100% effective in that war.

We did have the one-up in one area — our guns had GPS attached to them, which gave greater accuracy and faster response time, which led to my Regiment being taken away from the British forces and given to the US Marine Corps, who would be the first to cross the border.

So, I ended up in the early hours of the 19th of March in my Land Rover, watching the shock and awe fly over whilst my US counterparts sat in their heavily armoured vehicles, wondering — not for the first time — whether at 16, in 1989, I'd made the right decision. One piece of technology that did prove its worth was the LAC, Lightweight Artillery Computer. Slightly larger than a laptop, this machine was lightning-fast at doing all the complex computation for artillery fire. For me personally, this became a life-saver when, a couple of days later, whilst locked in a duel with an Iraqi artillery regiment, we got fed real-time where they were and where they were shooting and scooting to next to try and pick us off. With the speed that LACs worked at, we fought them off!

After the Gulf War, I got my first real taste of computers at my daily job, where suddenly desktop PCs were in the office and email had replaced the old form of written memos. (This took away some of the fun, as you no longer could send the newest member to the Regiment to the Quartermaster stores with a memo in transit envelope requesting that a long weight be issued to the newest member.)

During this time, I had started to progress through the ranks. I became an instructor in Signals and gained my Assessor's qualification. I could now assess newer members of the Regiment gaining not only their Signals qualification but also NVQ. At the time I didn’t see the positives, as it was more paperwork for me on top of writing and delivering lessons, course reports, and, now, NVQ paperwork.

After my first tour of Afghanistan, I came back to the joys of the Bowman radio system; back then, it was known as "Better Off With Map and Nokia." Using a system powered by Windows ME restricted edition and with no mouse and a Sinclair spectrum-style keyboard, I sat in disbelief, thinking again how far behind our US counterparts we were and wishing I still had my trusty tactical satellite radio I had in Afghanistan... However, it was not long before I was back out in Afghanistan avoiding BOWMAN!

Being the Scotsman that I am, I sold my soul to become a Sergeant Major and became the Communication and Information Systems Manager for my Regiment, where I would have sleepless nights trying to build and test networks capable of transmitting voice and data at the same time over the gentle rolling hills of Sennybridge and Otterburn to allow my Regiment carry out training exercises. Thankfully, my career and pension were saved and I had “no comms, no bombs” incidents right up until retirement.

The transition from the military is a daunting one, and just as I was leaving Openreach decided it wanted to scoop up the pool of service leavers and use their transferable skills to cut down on training costs. I spent many a time kneeling on a carpet wondering if it was human, animal, or other that caused the wet patch.

Thankfully, I escaped the dreaded fear of someone nicking my ladder whilst up the pole when an advert popped on an ex-forces job board looking for Apprenticeship Assessors with a military background and experience with military voice and data networks. I sent off my CV and cover letter and one interview later I was back on-barracks, minus the uniform, assessing the Royal Signals and Infantry Signallers who where doing their Army Apprenticeship in Telecommunications — which, eventually, led me here, to my Firebrand family!